PHILADELPHIA -- Amita Sehgal, PhD, the John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Chronobiology Program in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, considered one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer. Selected for "their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research," the three scientists are part of the 2016 Academy class of 84 members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries.
Sehgal studies the molecular and genetic components of sleep and circadian, or 24-hour, rhythms. Using the fruit fly, she and others have characterized a molecular clock present in flies and humans.
Her lab has also developed the fly as a model system for studying sleep, showing that the rest phase in flies is a sleeplike state, helping to answer important questions about the essential need for sleep. Sehgal received the Stanley Cohen Senior Faculty Research Award from Penn and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience.
Sehgal is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
She was selected along with two other Penn faculty members: Marsha Lester, the Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Andrea Liu, the Hepburn Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, both in Penn's .
A full list of 2016 Academy Members available is available on the National Academy website.
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