Robert A. Bevans-Kerr
EMGS is Proud to Announce the 2019 Alexander Hollaender & EMGS Award Recipients
Jacksonville, FL, February 22, 2019
The Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society is proud to announce the 2019 Alexander Hollaender and EMGS Award recipients. The recipients will be honored at the 2019 EMGS Annual Meeting Awards Banquet in Washington, DC on Sunday, September 22, 2019.
The Alexander Hollaender Award is conferred annually in recognition of outstanding contributions in the application of the principles and techniques of environmental mutagenesis to the protection of Human Health. The Society is proud to announce Dr. Randy Jirtle as the 2019 Hollaender Award recipient. The award recognizes Dr. Jirtle’s discovery that the environment can influence inheritance of phenotypic traits through epigenetic reprogramming representing one of the most important scientific advances of the 21st century. To quote his nominators: “His pioneering work in epigenetics and genomic imprinting has uncovered a vast territory in which a gene represents less of an inexorable sentence and more of an access point for the environment to modify the genome. His discoveries have produced a far more complete and useful understanding of human development and diseases”. It is evident to much of the scientific community that the developmental origins of human disease are impacted through environmental epigenetics, a field that he founded and grew especially within the EMGS. Dr. Jirtle will deliver the Alexander Hollaender Award plenary lecture at the EMGS Annual Meeting on Saturday, September 21, 2019 from 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm.
The EMGS Award is conferred annually in recognition of outstanding research contributions in the area of environmental mutagenesis. The Society is proud to announce Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers as the 2019 EMGS Award recipient. This award recognizes Dr. Hoeijmakers contributions to the DNA repair and aging fields with numerous seminal scientific findings including the cloning of the first human DNA repair gene, ERCC1, the discovery that the ERCC2 and ERCC3 genes encode the XPD and XPB helicases, respectively, which are part of the transcription factor IIH (a finding that establishes a link between NER and transcription), generation of the largest collection of mouse models with DNA repair defects, identification and characterization of a progeroid syndrome caused by ERCC1 or XPF mutations, establishment of ERCC1-mutant mice as a premier model of premature aging and extensive studies of how neurological phenotypes and other aging related pathologies can be counteracted by nutritional intervention. Dr. Hoeijmakers will deliver the EMGS Award plenary lecture at the EMGS Annual Meeting on Monday, September 23, 2019 from 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm.
The EMGS recognizes the scientific achievements of our diverse membership and fosters career development and advancement for researchers studying DNA damage and repair, molecular epidemiology, risk assessment, environmental toxicology, and epigenetics. For more information, visit www.emgs-us.org.
