Seven UC Berkeley faculty members were among 120 new members and 23 new international members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced this week, an honor that recognizes their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
The seven new members are neuroscientist Marla Feller, herpetologist Tyrone Hayes, economists Hilary Hoynes and Emmanuel Saez, chemists Jeffrey Long and T. Don Tilley and biochemist Donald Rio.
There are now 156 UC Berkeley faculty members in the ranks of the NAS.
The NAS is a private, nonprofit institution established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It not only recognizes achievement in science, but also provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.
Donald Rio, a professor of molecular and cell biology, studies the mechanisms used to mobilize transposable DNA elements in the genome and how these become altered in disease states. He also investigates patterns of alternative splicing of pre-mRNA, which is an important mechanism for the regulation of gene expression and the evolution of organismal complexity in metazoans, and which leads to significant proteomic diversification.