By Mike Billings | Originally published on UCSF News
The two UCSF Psychiatry faculty members were among 213 new members elected to the 2016 class, which includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Wolf Prize; MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships; the Fields Medal; and the Grammy Award and National Book Award.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world.
“It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s board of directors.
Rubenstein, the Nina Ireland Distinguished Professor in Child Psychiatry, and Brainard, an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor in the Departments of Physiology and Psychiatry, are among the handful of physical and biological scientists elected this year to the Academy.
Brainard, also a faculty member in the UCSF Center for Integrative Neuroscience, studies how songbirds learn their songs. His research addresses general questions of how experience acts on the nervous system to shape behavior, and how genetic differences across individuals contribute to differences in learning.
Rubenstein studies genetic mechanisms involved in brain development, and how developmental processes may go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. He recently was honored by three organizations for his research.
The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 8 in Cambridge, Mass.
A complete list of new members, as well as the Academy’s news release, can be found on the Academy’s website.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service. UCSF Psychiatry has an organizational structure that crosses all major UCSF sites - Parnassus, Mission Bay, Laurel Heights, Mt. Zion, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
