Princeton University president named 2010 winner of Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research

Internationally renowned scientist and scholar Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University, was named the 2010 winner of the Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research.

The Prize, established by the Friends of Canadian Institutes of Health Research in collaboration with the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, recognizes exceptional innovation by a visionary health leader of international stature. President Tilghman will receive the Prize and deliver a public lecture on September 29, 2010 in Ottawa.

Tilghman, a native of Canada, received her Honors B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968 and obtained her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia. During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, she made a number of groundbreaking discoveries while participating in cloning the first mammalian gene.

Tilghman came to Princeton in 1986 and two years later, she joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator. In 1998, she became the founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. Tilghman chaired Princeton's Council on Science and Technology, which encourages the teaching of science and technology to students outside the sciences. She initiated the Princeton Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, a program across all the science and engineering disciplines that brings postdoctoral students to Princeton each year to gain experience in both research and teaching. Tilghman has served in advisory roles to many national and international institutions.

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 Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research was established in 2005 by the Friends of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FCIHR) in recognition of Dr. Henry Friesen's distinguished leadership, vision and innovative contributions to health and health research. The $35,000 Friesen Prize is awarded annually.