Elaine Fuchs to receive Passano Award

Elaine Fuchs, a world leader in skin biology and its human genetic disorders, will receive the Passano Prize for landmark contributions to skin biology and its disorders, including genetic syndromes, stem cells and cancers. Fuchs will receive the award and give the Passano Foundation Award lecture April 11 at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Fuchs, who is Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor and head of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, is also is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is being recognized for her contributions to our knowledge of skin biology and skin stem cells. Her work has



provided insights into our understanding of how stem cells of all types are able to rejuvenate tissues throughout life and also repair them after injury.

Fuchs received her B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1972 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1977 from Princeton University. She was a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1980. Fuchs was the Amgen Professor of Basic Sciences at The University of Chicago before coming to Rockefeller in 2002. She has been an HHMI investigator since 1988.

Fuchs has received a number of honors and awards, including the 2010 L’Oreal/UNESCO Women in Science Prize, the 2010 James Madison Medal from Princeton University, the 2008 National Medal of Science, the Bering Award and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Award for Scientific Excellence in 2006, the Dickson Prize in Medicine in 2004, the Novartis/Drew Award in Biomedical Research in 2003, the Cartwright Award from Columbia University in 2002 and the Women in Cell Biology Senior Women’s Career Achievement Award in 1997. In 1994 Fuchs was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Passano Foundation, founded in 1945, is devoted to encouraging medical science and research, particularly activities that have broad impact and clinical application. More than 20 of the Passano award winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize. Previous Passano Award winners currently at Rockefeller include Jeffrey M. Friedman, James E. Darnell Jr. and Robert G. Roeder.