National Academy of Medicine Elects Two MBL Community Members

Daniel Fletcher, current faculty and former co-director of the MBL Physiology course, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Fletcher is a professor of bioengineering and biophysics at University of California, Berkeley.

Fletcher was recognized by NAM "for the development of mobile phone-based microscopy to diagnose infectious diseases in developing countries, and for contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction."

CellScope technology, developed by Fletcher’s lab, turns the camera of a mobile phone or tablet computer into a high-quality light microscope. By combining mobile microscopy with automation and wireless communication, Fletcher created new ways to tackle applications, from diagnosing infectious disease and detecting ear infections to screening for diabetic retinopathy.

Fletcher served on the MBL Physiology course faculty in 2025, 2024 and 2008-2018, and was course co-director 2019-2023.

Also elected to the NAM this year was Karel Svoboda, director of the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. Svoboda is an alumnus of the MBL Neurobiology course (2002) and was a faculty member in Neural Systems & Behavior (2009-2011). 

The NAM recognized Svoboda for "discovering synaptic mechanisms of learning and neural circuit mechanisms underlying planning and movement, and for developing widely used microscopes, molecular tools, and software for cellular imaging in the intact brain."