Accolades

Ralph Muller, President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospitals and Health Systems, began his one-year tenure as chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges at the organization’s 110th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Muller succeeds William Peck, dean of the Washington University School of Medicine.

Muller, who served as the chair of the AAMC’s Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems in 1998, led the association’s Medical Special Action Committee, which successfully brought an immediate end to further Medicare cuts to U.S. teaching hospitals.

Muller continues to play a leadership role in the University Healthsystem Consortium, where he has served as a member of the board of directors for three years and as a chair of several UHC study projects.

He also is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Opinion Research Center at the University as well as a member of the University Laboratory Schools and Weiss Memorial Hospital boards. Muller is a past board member and an executive committee member of the Illinois Hospitals and Healthsystems Association.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently elected four members of the University community as fellows of AAAS.

The four are Susan Coppersmith, Professor in Physics; Martin Feder, Professor in Organismal Biology & Anatomy; Ralph Muller, President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospitals and Health Systems; and George Tolley, Professor in Economics.

These members, who are among 283 elected, will be recognized for their contributions to science at the Fellows Forum in February in Washington, D.C. They will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette pin as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments.

Bruce Lahn, Assistant Professor in Human Genetics and Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology, has been chosen as one of the TR100, an exceptional group of young innovators selected by Tech Review Magazine as most likely to make significant technological and scientific contributions in the next century.

Lahn, who joined Chicago’s faculty in July, received this honor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday, Nov. 4. Lahn, an expert on the function and evolution of X and Y chromosomes, received his undergraduate degree in biology in 1991 from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in 1998 from MIT, where he worked in the lab of David Page.

While working in Page’s lab, Lahn defined a new human chromosomal syndrome referred to as “XY-Xq” syndrome, which is associated with severe mental retardation. Lahn also led efforts to isolate and characterize genes of the entire human Y chromosome. His most recent work has led to the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of human sex chromosomes.