Former MBL Trustee Claire M. Fraser is President-Elect of AAAS

Former MBL Trustee Claire M. Fraser has been named president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest multidisciplinary science society. An expert in microbial genomics, Fraser founded and directs the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She will begin her term on Feb. 18 at the AAAS Meeting in Washington, D.C. 

In addition, David Burgess of Boston College, a longtime MBL Whitman Center scientist and member of the Science Council and the MBL Society, has been named chair-elect of AAAS's Biological Sciences Division. A Professor of Biology at BC, Burgess's research focuses on how cell shape or form is regulated by cytoskeleton dynamics.

Along with serving as an MBL trustee (2000-2004), Fraser directed the Advances in Genome Technology/Bioinformatics workshops at MBL (2002 and 2004), was on the faculty of the Molecular Evolution workshop (1991-2001), and is an alumna of the X-Microinjection Techniques workshop (1990).

Burgess has been an investigator in the MBL Whitman Center nearly every summer since 2000; served on the faculty of the MBL Physiology Course (1983, 1987, 1988), directed the Biomedical Course in the MBL Logan Science Journalism Program (2012), and is a former MBL adjunct scientist.

Congratulations to both!