Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman,
a world-renowned scholar and leader in the field of molecular biology,
has been awarded the Genetics Society of America Medal. The award is
presented annually by the society in recognition of a scientist's
outstanding contributions in the field of genetics for the past 15
years.
Tilghman was nominated for her pioneering work in epigenetics and
imprinting, which has expanded the knowledge base about embryo
development in mammals.
Before being named Princeton's president in 2001, Tilghman served as a
faculty member at the University for 15 years. She came to Princeton in
1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Two years
later, she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an
investigator. In 1998, she took on additional responsibilities as the
founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler
Institute for Integrative Genomics.
A member of the National Research Council's committee that set the
blueprint for the U.S. effort in the Human Genome Project, Tilghman
also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council
of the Human Genome Project Initiative for the National Institutes of
Health.
She is renowned not only for her pioneering research, but for her
national leadership on behalf of women in science and for promoting
efforts to make the early careers of young scientists as meaningful and
productive as possible.
The Genetics Society of America represents nearly 5,000 scientists and educators in the field of genetics.
