Robert B. Darnell and Victor Wilson Named 2010 AAAS Fellows

Rockefeller University scientists Robert B. Darnell and Victor Wilson have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 503 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, February 19 at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Darnell and Wilson are part of the AAAS section on neuroscience.

Darnell, who is Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, was elected for pioneering translational studies of the paraneoplastic neurologic disorders (PNDs), disorders in which tumor immunity is linked to autoimmune brain degenerative disease. Pursuing the function of the PND antigens, Darnell's lab has pioneered insights into the role of neuron-specific RNA binding proteins in neuronal biology and disease, including the Nova proteins he discovered and the related FMRP protein — the protein lost in Fragile-X mental retardation. Darnell's lab also has shown that the immune systems of PND patients thwart tumors with what begins as a classical antiviral response: The patients' T cells produce antibodies and T cells that recognize the neuronal antigens found within their tumors. They also discovered that apoptotic tumor cells serve as potent instigators of this immune response in PND patients, and are developing cancer vaccines for use in small-scale clinical trials performed at The Rockefeller University Hospital to mimic PND tumor immunity.

Darnell joined Rockefeller University in 1992 as assistant professor and associate physician at The Rockefeller University Hospital. He was named associate professor in 1997 and professor and senior physician in 2000. In 2002 Dr. Darnell was appointed investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and named Heilbrunn Professor at Rockefeller. Darnell's awards include the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research in 2000, the Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award in 1998 and the Irma T. Hirschl Trust Career Scientist Award in 1996. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2010.

Wilson, a neurophysiologist, was elected a AAAS Fellow for pioneering work in vestibular system physiology, including characterizing the role of the vestibular labyrinth, the complex of receptors in the inner ear that acts as a "sixth sense" by contributing to an animal's perception of its position in space and to its control of balance and posture. He discovered that disinhibition occurs in the central nervous system, and determined the route of nerve impulses as they flow from receptors in the vestibular labyrinth to motor neurons. He is also the co-author of Mammalian Vestibular Physiology, one of the seminal books on the vestibular system and is a contributor to a recent volume on the subject, The Vestibular System, published in 2007.

Wilson received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Tufts College, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He was appointed a research associate at Rockefeller in 1953, then served in the U.S. Army as a physiologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research until 1956. He was named assistant professor in 1958, associate professor in 1962 and professor in 1969.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org/) as well as Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling (www.sciencesignaling.org/). AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874.