Society for Developmental Biology Honors MBL Course Faculty Members
Three MBL affiliates have been honored by the Society for Development Biology, including longtime MBL faculty member Scott E. Fraser of the University of Southern California, who was awarded the 2021 Edwin G. Conklin Medal in Developmental Biology.
"Fraser helped define our understanding of stem cells, cell lineage, and morphogenesis through development of tools that changed how developmental biology is studied," said the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) in a tweet announcing the award.
The Conklin Medal recognizes a developmental biologist "who has made and is continuing to make extraordinary research contributions to the field, and is an excellent mentor who has helped train the next generation of outstanding scientists," according to the SDB. The award was established in 1995.
Fraser is a current member of the MBL Society and served as director of the MBL Embryology course form 1997 - 2001. He was also a faculty member from 1990-1995, 2002, 2004-2008, and in 2011. Fraser first came to the MBL as a Whitman scientist in 1979.
Conklin at the MBL
Edwin G. Conklin (1863-1952) was a celebrated developmental biologist and educator. He spent the majority of his professional career at Princeton University, and had a long history with the Marine Biological Laboratory. Conklin taught in the Embryology course for many years, was an MBL Trustee, and owned a house in Woods Hole. He visited the MBL every summer from the 1890s through the 1930s, according the MBL History Project.
Also honored by the Society for Developmental Biology this year was Mansi Srivastava of Harvard University. Srivastava, who was a faculty member for the Embryology Course from 2017-2019 and is on a number of MBL Committees, was awarded the 2021 Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award. Srivastava was selected "for her work developing the acoel worm, Hofstenia miamia as a model to study whole-body regeneration and uncovering its gene regulatory network," said SDB in a tweet announcing the award.
Edward De Robertis of the University of California, Los Angeles, was awarded the 2021 SDB Lifetime Achievement Award for his work studying the molecular basis of the Spemann organizer and his work identifying goosecoid, Chordin, and others as key regulators of dorsal/ventral (DV) patterning, said the SDB in a tweet. De Robertis served as Embryology course faculty in 1979.