Recent Highlights from our
Exceptional Women Scientists
Barbara Bosch Received the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists
Dr. Bosch is a 2026 recipient of the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, an honor conferred by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences to recognize outstanding scientific achievement among young scientists from research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Dr. Bosch is honored for advancing mechanism-guided drug discovery for priority pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Andrea Terceros Received the Weintraub Graduate Student Research Award
Dr. Terceros, a 2022 Women & Science Graduate Fellow, is a 2026 recipient of the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Research Award, presented by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center for outstanding Ph.D. research. Dr. Terceros, working in Priya Rajasethupathy’s lab, combined CRISPR screening with behavioral studies to show that memories are encoded for variable duration by the expression of specific transcription factors.
Vanessa Ruta Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
In 2026, Dr. Ruta was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit organization of the country’s leading researchers, recognizing and promoting outstanding science through member elections, its official journal, and special awards. Dr. Ruta has discovered neural mechanisms by which the same pheromone can elicit attraction or repulsion in different fruit fly species. She also determined the atomic-level structure of the first olfactory receptor and showed how a limited number of receptors can distinguish millions of distinct odors.
Leslie Vosshall Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
In 2026, Dr. Vosshall was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges. Dr. Voshall is well-known for her discoveries of how mosquitoes find their human hosts and can precisely locate and canulate small veins in the skin to obtain a blood meal, sometimes transmitting pathogens like malaria in the process.
Elaine Fuchs Elected President of AACR Academy
In 2025, Dr. Fuchs was elected president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Academy. AACR recognizes and honors extraordinary scientists whose groundbreaking contributions have driven significant innovation and progress in the fight against cancer. Dr. Fuchs was elected to the AACR in 2013, served on its Board of Directors from 2020 to 2023, and elected president of its Academy in 2025.
Svetlana Mojsov Received Several International Prizes
Svetlana Mojsov, Ph.D., has received numerous prizes for her discovery of GLP-1 and its role as a glucose-dependent inducer of insulin secretion led to the development of new medicines for type 2 diabetes mellitus, and more recently as potent weight-loss drugs that prevent heart attacks. These prizes include: the 2025 Breakthrough Prize, the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the VinFuture Prize for Innovation with Outstanding Achievements in Emerging Fields, the 2024 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research, the 2024 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, the Warren Triennial Prize, the Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science, and the Frontiers of Knowledge Award. She was also named TIME100 Most Influential People of 2024 and Top 10 people who made a difference in science this year by Nature magazine.
Dana Orange Received the John B. Winfield Visiting Scholar Award
Dr. Orange received the 2025 John B. Winfield Visiting Scholar Award from the University of North Carolina. This award recognizes an outstanding, nationally known investigator who has made significant contributions to the advancement of research in the fields of rheumatology and arthritis research.
Katya Vinogradova Appointed to CZ Zuckerberg Biohub NY
In 2025, Dr. Vinogradova was appointed investigator of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York. The Investigator Program provides unrestricted funding for three years to pursue innovative and high-impact research projects that align with the biohub’s mission to harness and bioengineer immune cells for the early detection, prevention, and treatment of a broad spectrum of age-related diseases. Dr. Kivanç Birsoy was also appointed investigator this year.
Leslie Vosshall Received the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience
Dr. Vosshall received the 2025 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience for her pioneering work on mosquito olfaction, elucidating the mechanisms by which they find human prey and identify precise sites to target to obtain a blood meal. Her work has implications for the large number of diseases transmitted by mosquito bites. This prize recognizes outstanding advances in the field of neuroscience. She is the fourth Rockefeller scientist to receive this award, joining Drs. Cori Bargmann, Charles Gilbert, and Bruce McEwen who were previously honored.
Lamia Wahba Named Rita Allen Foundation Scholar
Dr. Wahba was named a 2025 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar in recognition of her work on the non-DNA-based mechanisms by which biological information can be transmitted across generations. This grant is awarded to early-career biomedical scientists.
Priya Rajasethupathy Received the MIND Prize
In 2023, Dr. Rajasethupathy received the inaugural Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery Prize (MIND Prize), a new prize presented by the Pershing Square Foundation to recognize and support “next-frontier thinkers” who can uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition, and to yield breakthroughs in neurodegenerative and neurocognitive disorder research.
