AAA announces recipients of Young Investigator Awards

The American Association of Anatomist's (AAA) Young Investigator Awards combine three long-standing AAA awards-Bensley, Herrick, and Mossman-with the recently established Morphological Sciences Award, all recognizing investigators in the early stages of their careers who have made important contributions to biomedical science through their research in cell/molecular biology, developmental biology, comparative neuroanatomy, or the morphological sciences. This year's Young Investigator Awards Committee was chaired by David Bilder (Univ. of California/Berkeley) and included Iain Cheeseman (Whitehead Institute), Andrew J. Ewald (Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine), Konrad Hochedlinger (Massachusetts General Hospital), Michael J. Piper (The Univ. of Queensland), Adrian Salic (Harvard Medical School), Katja Schenke-Layland (Fraunhofer Institute), and Alexis M Stranahan (Medical College of Georgia). Recipients of all four awards will present lectures in AAA's Young Investigator Awards Symposium, scheduled for Sunday, April 22, 5-7 p.m., at the AAA Annual Meeting/EB 2012 in San Diego.

Julian A. Guttman, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, will receive AAA's 2012 Morphological Sciences Award and present an award lecture on "Knocking E. Coli Off of Their Pedestals: Understanding the Strategies Microbes Exploit to Generate Morphological Structure during their Disease Processes" at the AAA Annual Meeting during EB 2012. The award to Guttman recognizes him as an emerging leader in resolving the molecular basis of host-pathogen interactions, a field with profound potential to limit the burden of human disease, through his innovative combination of morphological techniques both in vitro and in intact animal model systems.

Jason J. Radley, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Iowa, will receive AAA's 2012 C.J. Herrick Award in Neuroanatomy and will present an award lecture on "Evidence for a Limbic Cortical HPA-Inhibitory Network and Its Role in Chronic Stress-Induced HPA Axis Hyperactivity" at the AAA Annual Meeting at EB 2012. The award recognizes Radley for his novel insights into the mechanisms underlying neural plasticity in response to stress, significance of which is underscored by the number of high quality articles he has published.

Peter W. Reddien, an associate professor at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, will receive AAA's 2012 Harland Winfield Mossman Award in Developmental Biology and will present an award lecture entitled "The Cellular and Molecular Basis for Regeneration in Planarians" at the AAA Annual Meeting at EB 2012. The award recognizes Reddien for his seminal contributions to the field of tissue regeneration by studying its underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms. Using planaria as a model system, Reddien has demonstrated the pluripotent stem cell-like nature of the regenerative source tissue and defined key pathways involved in regeneration.

Jeremy F. Reiter, an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF, will receive the 2012 R.R. Bensley Award in Cell Biology and present an award lecture entitled "Tectonics Form a Transition Zone Complex of Ciliopathy Proteins that Regulate Ciliary Composition" at the AAA Annual Meeting during EB 2012.The award to Reiter recognizes him for his elegant analysis of basic mechanisms of cilia structure and function, including defining key roles for a human disease-related gene in cilia assembly, analyzing the role of cilia during Hedgehog signaling in normal and cancer cells, and applying beautiful imaging-based analysis to central organismal questions.