AAA award winners.

Abstract

The Charles Judson Herrick Award was established in 1962 to recognize young investigators who make important contributions to the field of comparative neurology and have demonstrated remarkable promise of future accomplishment. This award is named in honor of C.J. Herrick, the great American comparative neuroanatomist and long-time editor of the Journal of Comparative Neurology. The recipient of the 2003 Charles Judson Herrick Award is Lique M. Coolen. Dr. Coolen presented a lecture entitled “Sex and the Single Rat: A Neurobiological Perspective” on April 12, 2003, at the Annual Meeting of the AAA at Experimental Biology 2003. Dr. Coolen received her B.A. and M.S. in Psychology (both in 1990) from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. In 1995, she received her Ph.D. degree in Neurosciences from the University of Nijmegen with her thesis advisor Dr. J.G. Veening. From 1995 to 1996, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale University, and from 1996 to 1998, she held the position of Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Dr. Coolen became an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology, and Anatomy at the University of Cincinnati in 1998 and was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor in the same department in 2000. Dr. Lique M. Coolen Dr. Coolen's research follows two different but related lines. First, she is studying the neural pathways that control ejaculation, in particular the pathways involved in the processing and relaying of ejaculation-related signals to the brain, and the mechanisms by which the rewarding properties of this behavior are processed. She uses a variety of anatomical techniques to study these interrelations. She has recently identified a specific population of spinal neurons that appear to form a spinal ejaculation generator. This finding provides anatomical evidence of a center that has long been suspected to exist but has never been identified. This research may lead to the development of treatments for sexual dysfunction in paraplegics and other patients with spinal cord injury. The second line of Dr. Coolen's research relates to limbic system and the motivation and reward of particular behaviors. She has demonstrated that endogenous opioids are released during different stages of sexual behavior and noted that certain drugs act on the same pathways within the brain that are also related to certain aspects of sexual behavior. She has used functional genomics and proteomics to investigate the differences and similarities in gene and protein expression within the limbic system as related to sexual behavior. For a young Neurobiologist, Dr. Coolen has been exceptionally productive. At this early stage in her career, she already has 17 publications, 8 additional papers submitted, and a total of 55 abstracts representing presentations at national and international meetings. Her publications have appeared in widely recognized and highly respected journals such as Brain Research, Neuroscience, Behavioral Brain Research, Journal of Comparative Neurology, Endocrinology, Journal of Neuroscience, and others. Her research program is currently supported by two grants from the National Institutes of Health, on which she appears as principal investigator. In the past, she has also been supported by grant funds from the National Science Foundation. Since receiving her doctoral degree in 1995, Dr. Coolen has been recognized by a Young Investigator Award at the workshop on Steroid Hormones and Brain Function and by the prestigious Frank A. Beach Award from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. In addition, she has been invited to participate on a NIDA Special Emphasis Panel and has been invited to review grants for the NSF and the Nederlands Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. In addition to her excellent publication record and outstanding grant support from NIH, Dr. Coolen has also participated in national and international events. At the international level, she is a member of the committee International Consultation on Erectile and Sexual Dysfunctions sponsored by the World Health Organization. She has been invited to present her research at national and international meetings, including those in Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, and several venues within the United States. In addition, she has been invited to present seminars at numerous universities around the world. These institutions include, but are not limited to, the University of Utrecht, University of Nijmegen, University of Groningen, University of Massachusetts, University of Connecticut, Rockefeller University, Emory University, and Free University of Amsterdam. Dr. Coolen has also been active in departmental committee work and has been particularly active in the education of graduate students. She has served on numerous dissertation and qualifying committees, as an undergraduate mentor for numerous students in the southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky region, and is, or has been, a research advisory to seven students working on doctoral degrees. Dr. Coolen's teaching experience has included the Brain and Behavior course for first-year medical students and graduate students at the University of Cincinnati, lecturer in Neuroendocrinology to graduate students, and other courses in the graduate program. Dr. Coolen's list of professional affiliations and review activities for journals is excellent for a young scientist. She is a member of the society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, Society for Neuroscience, the group Women in Neuroscience, the Association for Women in Science, and the International Brain Research Organization. She serves as a member of the Editorial Board for Physiology and Behavior and has been an external reviewer for numerous journals, including, but not limited to, Biology of Reproduction, Hormones and Behavior, Journal of Comparative Neurology, Journal of Neuroscience, Neuroscience, Molecular Neurobiology, and Brain Research Bulletin. Dr. Coolen is an outstanding young neuroscientist who early in her career has shown outstanding accomplishments and clearly demonstrated sufficient promise of future contributions. She is a very worthy recipient of the 2003 Charles Judson Herrick Award. The R.R. Bensley Award recognizes distinguished contributions to the advancement of anatomy through discovery, ingenuity, and publications in the field of cell biology. The recipient of The Bensley Award for 2003 is Dr. Peter Arvan. Dr. Arvan presented a lecture entitled “Defective Thyroid Hormone Synthesis as a Disease of Protein Trafficking in the Secretory Pathway” on Sunday, April 13, 2003, at the Annual Meeting of the AAA at Experimental Biology 2003. Dr. Peter Arvan Dr. Arvan received his A.B. degree from Cornell University while working in the laboratory of Dr. Efraim Racker. He went on to receive his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University School of Medicine in 1984. His Ph.D. studies were in the Department of Cell Biology in the laboratory of Dr. J. David Castle. To a certain extent, Dr. Arvan has pursued both clinical and basic science careers. From 1984 to 1985 he was an intern in Internal Medicine at Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and from 1985 to 1988 he was in the Research-Residency Program at Yale. While at Yale University School of Medicine, he was a Research Fellow in the Section of Endocrinology (1985-1986), a resident in Medicine (1986-1987), and then a Clinical Fellow in Endocrinology (1987-1988). Dr. Arvan's first academic appointment was as Assistant Professor of Medicine (1988-1995) at Harvard Medical School, where he also served as Assistant Professor in the Cell and Developmental Biology Program. In 1996, he became an Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor in the Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard. Also in that year, Dr. Arvan moved to Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he became Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Associate Professor in the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology. He was promoted to Professor in these respective departments in the year 2000 and received an award of Tenure in 2001. Dr. Arvan's research interest is concerned with the formation of insulin granules in pancreatic islets and artificial β-cells and thyroid hormone synthesis by thyroid epithelial cells. His studies have included identifying the fundamental mechanisms of protein sorting within the secretory pathway with a special emphasis on formation of insulin granules in pancreatic islet cells. He has also investigated protein multimerization and its role in differential protein exit from the endoplasmic reticulum. His research has also been concerned with identifying human endoplasmic reticulum storage diseases and with developing a classification of these diseases. Dr. Arvan's scientific work is highly respected by his peers and well-received by the cell biology community. He has had support for his research program since 1988, and currently is funded by two grants from the National Institutes of Health (as principal investigator), by a grant from the American Diabetes Association, and by a grant from the AlphaOne Foundation. At the writing of this biographical sketch, Dr. Arvan had almost 50 publications in highly respected peer-reviewed journals and almost a dozen review articles, in journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Journal of Cell Biology, the American Journal of Physiology, the European Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Thrombosis Research, and others. This broad range of journals reflects the range of expertise in Dr. Arvan's research, and his numerous publications in the Journal of Cell Biology and the Journal of Biological Chemistry represents his significant contributions to these fields. Dr. Arvan is quite active in professional organizations, serves as a grant reviewer for the NIH and the National Science Foundation, and is a member of several editorial boards. His memberships include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Endocrine Society, the American Thyroid Association, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the American Diabetes Association. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (1988-2000) and currently serves on the boards of the journal Thyroid and the American Journal of Physiology/Endocrine and Metabolism Portion. In addition, since 1988, Dr. Arvan has served as an external reviewer for 15 highly recognized scientific journals. These include, but are not limited to, Science, the Anatomical Record, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Cell Science, Endocrinology, Journal of Cell Biology, the American Journal of Physiology, and others. His grant review activities have included reviewing numerous applications for the NIH and NSF since 1992 and participating as a special reviewer for the NIH in the years 1992-1997. He has served on special review site visit panels for the NICHD Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch and numerous NIH Endocrinology study sections. Special recognitions that Dr. Arvan has received over the years include being elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1977), serving as PEW Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences (1988), being recognized by the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1995), and receiving the Van Meter Award from the American Thyroid Association in 1997. He was also Wellcome Visiting Professor in the Basic Medical Sciences in 1999 and the recipient of Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award in 1999. In addition, he received the Monbusho Grant-in-Aid for International Scientific Research from the ministry of Education Science of Japan in the year 2000. In addition to these awards, Dr. Arvan has been invited to present scientific papers at numerous national and international venues. Within the United States, he has been invited to give scientific presentations that literally span the country, from Boston to San Diego. In the international sphere, Dr. Arvan has made scientific presentations in Austria, United Kingdom, Japan, Denmark, and Italy. Despite an enormously busy research and speaking schedule, Dr. Arvan is deeply involved in activities of his institution and department. Since 1994, he has served on or chaired 13 committees at the institutions in which he held faculty positions during these years. This service has included being a member of the Faculty Senate, the M.D. Ph.D. Steering Committee, a Review Committee for the Department of Medicine Research Fellowship, and chair of committees on Appointments and Promotions at Einstein. He has also been intensively involved in teaching in the areas of Cell and Membrane Cell Biology at Yale, Harvard, and Albert Einstein. He has lectured on such diverse topics as Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Foundations of Medicine, Endocrine Pathophysiology, and variety of other special courses related to cell and molecular biology. Dr. Arvan's involvement in graduate education and in the mentoring of postdoctoral fellows and M.D. fellows has been exemplary. He has served as faculty advisor for many Ph.D. students, advised students during their laboratory rotations, and mentored a number of postdoctoral fellows during his career. In addition, he has served on many thesis advisory, qualifying exam, and thesis defense committees. In this respect, Dr. Arvan has made an outstanding effort to assist in the education of the next generation of cell biologists. It is also appropriate to point out that, in addition to his numerous contributions in the field of basic science, Dr. Arvan is active in the field of medicine. This activity is reflected in his involvement in mentoring M.D. postdoctoral students and through other service activities related to clinical departments. In addition, he is licensed in the State of New York and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. His continuing commitment to the medical field is also seen by the fact that, even with a very busy schedule, he is an attending physician in the Endocrine Clinic, an Endocrine Consultant, and the attending at an evening clinic 1 day a month at the Jacobi Hospital in Bronx, New York. Dr. Arvan's research successes have been widely recognized by his scientific peers. His contributions to endocrinology and the understanding of pancreatic functions are significant. Overall, his scientific contributions have provided us with a number of insights in to the areas of cell structure and function. Dr. Arvan is a very worthy recipient of the 2003 R.R. Bensley Award. The Harland Winfield Mossman Award recognizes a young investigator who has made important contributions to the field of developmental biology and has demonstrated remarkable promise of future accomplishments. The Award is named in honor of H.W. Mossman, the well-known and highly regarded American embryologist and long-time member of the AAA. The Mossman Award recipient for 2003 is Marnie E. Halpern. Dr. Halpern presented a talk entitled “One-Eyed, Left-Brained, and Greasy: The Glamour of Zebrafish Genetics” on April 14, 2003, at Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2003. Dr. Marnie E. Halpern Dr. Halpern received both her B.Sc. in Biology (1981) and her M.Sc. in Molecular Biology (1984) from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She went on to receive her Ph.D. degree in Biology from Yale in 1990. As a graduate student in 1987-1988, she was a lecturer in Genetics and Developmental Biology at Yale and a Part-time Associate Researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Human Gene Mapping Library in New Haven, Connecticut. After receiving her Ph.D. degree, she spent 4 years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oregon. In 1994, she became a Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland, in the Department of Embryology. During that time, she became an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University and was eventually promoted to the rank of Adjunct Associate Professor in 2001. She currently holds the position of Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution and Adjunct Associate Professor at Hopkins. Dr. Halpern's research interests are in the area of neural development, particularly focusing on factors that affect midline development or the development of structures classicality associated with the midline of the neuraxis. She is one of a growing number of developmental neurobiologists who are using the zebrafish as their experimental model. In her research, Dr. Halpern has explored factors that affect the development of the notochord and floor plate precursors prior to their differentiation in later stages. She has also investigated the fact that some of the midline patterning genes are expressed asymmetrically in the developing brain. She has shown that asymmetric gene expression in the brain requires an intact midline and functional nodal signaling as well as genes that affect visceral laterality. She has gone on to identify several new genes that are expressed asymmetrically in the central nervous system and is systematically analyzing the development of vertebrate neural laterality using genomic and genetic resources now available in the zebrafish. Dr. Halpern has published the results of her research in highly regarded and well-known journals, including, but not limited to, Journal of Virology, Journal of Neuroscience, Development, Nature, Developmental Biology, Journal of Biological Chemistry. In addition to her 27 publications, she has published 8 review articles on topics that are currently of great interest. Her research is supported not only by the Carnegie Institution but by grant funds from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Honors and Awards received by Dr. Halpern include, but are not limited to, a fellowship from the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada, the Josephine De Karman Graduate Fellowship, a Predoctoral Fellowship from NIMH, Postdoctoral and Centennial Fellowships from the Medical Research Council of Canada, a Pew Scholarship, a summer Award from the Marine Biological Laboratory, and a Fellowship for the Human Frontier Science Program. In addition, Dr. Halpern serves on the Society for Developmental Biology Board of Directors as the elected Junior Faculty Representative and as the elected Mid-Atlantic Region Representative of this society. Dr. Halpern is also a member of the Society for Neuroscience, Society for Developmental Biology, Genetics Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Halpern's growing reputation in the field of developmental biology is also seen by a range of professional experiences and by her participation in national and international meetings. This past year, she has been an Invited Participant in the NSF Workshop for Establishing a Database of Identifying Neurons and a member of review panels for the NASA Life Science Division, the American Cancer Society, and for NIH grants. She has also worked as Coorganizer for the NIH Zebrafish Genomics Meeting, on the Program Committee for the Society of Developmental Biology Annual Meeting in 1999, and as Coorganizer for the Cold Spring Harbor Zebrafish Meeting in the year 2000. She is on the editorial boards of Genesis, and Developmental Biology. In addition, she has lectured on Embryology at Marine Biologic Laboratory in Woods Hole, has served on the Zebrafish Resource Center Advisory Board, and was invited to participate at the International Space Life Science Developmental Biology Workshop in 1999. Dr. Halpern also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for Zygogen. Dr. Halpern is an outstanding young investigator who has made significant and important contributions to her field and who has clear promise for future success. She is a most worthy recipient of the 2003 Harlan Winfield Mossman Award.