On Oct. 20 throughout its annual assembly, the Nationwide Academy of Drugs introduced the election of 100 new members, together with MIT college members Dina Katabi and Facundo Batista, together with three extra MIT alumni.
Election to the Nationwide Academy of Drugs (NAM) is taken into account one of many highest honors within the fields of well being and drugs, recognizing people who’ve demonstrated excellent skilled achievement and dedication to service.
Facundo Batista is the affiliate director and scientific director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, in addition to the primary Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Professor within the MIT Division of Biology. The Nationwide Academy of Drugs acknowledged Batista for “his work unraveling the biology of antibody-producing B cells to higher perceive how our physique’s immune programs responds to infectious illness.” Extra just lately, Facundo’s analysis has superior preclinical vaccine and therapeutic improvement for globally vital illnesses together with HIV, malaria, and influenza.
Batista earned a PhD from the Worldwide Faculty of Superior Research and established his lab in 2002 as a member of the Francis Crick Institute (previously the London Analysis Institute), concurrently holding a professorship at Imperial School London. In 2016, he joined the Ragon Institute to pursue a brand new analysis program making use of his experience in B cells and antibody responses to vaccine improvement, and preclinical vaccinology for illnesses together with SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. Batista is an elected fellow or member of the U.Ok. Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, the Academia de Ciencias de América Latina, and the European Molecular Biology Group, and he’s chief editor of The EMBO Journal.
Dina Katabi SM ’99, PhD ’03 is the Thuan (1990) and Nicole Pham Professor within the Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science at MIT. Her analysis spans digital well being, wi-fi sensing, cell computing, machine studying, and laptop imaginative and prescient. Katabi’s contributions embrace environment friendly communication protocols for the web, superior contactless biosensors, and novel AI fashions that interpret physiological indicators. The NAM acknowledged Katabi for “pioneering digital well being expertise that permits non-invasive, off-body distant well being monitoring by way of AI and wi-fi indicators, and for growing digital biomarkers for Parkinson’s development and detection. She has translated this expertise to advance goal, delicate measures of illness trajectory and remedy response in medical trials.”
Katabi is director of the MIT Middle for Wi-fi Networks and Cellular Computing. She can also be a member of the Pc Science and Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the place she leads the Networks at MIT Analysis Group. Katabi acquired a bachelor’s diploma from the College of Damascus and MS and PhD levels in laptop science from MIT. She is a MacArthur Fellow; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nationwide Academy of Sciences, and Nationwide Academy of Engineering; and a recipient of the ACM Computing Prize.
Extra MIT alumni who have been elected to the NAM for 2025 are:
- Christopher S. Chen SM ’93, PhD ’97, an alumnus of the Division of Mechanical Engineering and the Harvard-MIT Program in Well being Sciences and Expertise;
- Michael E. Matheny SM ’06, an alumnus of the Harvard-MIT Program in Well being Sciences and Expertise; and
- Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum SM ’87, PhD ’90, and alumna of the Division of Physics and the Harvard-MIT Program in Well being Sciences and Expertise.
Established initially because the Institute of Drugs in 1970 by the Nationwide Academy of Sciences, the Nationwide Academy of Drugs addresses important points in well being, science, drugs, and associated coverage, and conjures up optimistic actions throughout sectors.
“I’m deeply honored to welcome these extraordinary well being and drugs leaders and researchers into the Nationwide Academy of Drugs,” says NAM President Victor J. Dzau. “Their demonstrated excellence in tackling public well being challenges, main main discoveries, bettering well being care, advancing well being coverage, and addressing well being fairness will critically strengthen our collective capacity to deal with essentially the most urgent well being challenges of our time.”
