CWRU neuroscientist Lynn Landmesser has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.CWRU neuroscientist Lynn Landmesser has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Landmesser is chair and professor in the Department of Neurosciences at CWRU's School of Medicine and an internationally recognized leader in the field of developmental neuroscience. Election to membership in the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.
She joins three other CWRU faculty who are members: Cynthia Beall (anthropology), Oscar Ratnoff (medicine), and Frederick Robbins (medicine).
The election was held May 1 during the business session of the academy's 138th annual meeting. Landmesser was one of 72 new members (the only one from Ohio) and 15 foreign associates from 10 countries elected. In addition, one member was elected posthumously. The new elections bring the total number of active members to 1,874. Foreign associates are nonvoting members of the academy, with citizenship outside the United States. There are now 325 foreign associates.
"Lynn's election to the National Academy of Sciences is well-deserved. She is an exceptional scientist and leader in her field. Those of us at CWRU are very proud of her," said Nathan Berger, dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs.
Landmesser has been chair of CWRU's neuroscience department since 1999. She holds the Arline H. and Curtis F. Garvin Professorship.
Her research, conducted over the past 30 years, has established basic principles of how nerve cells make accurate connections with other cells, such as muscles, skin or other neurons. The accuracy of such connections is essential for all aspects of brain function, including how we control our movements, sense the world around us, experience emotions, think, and dream.
Landmesser's initial experiments combined elegant microtransplantation of pieces of spinal cord with electrical recordings to show that even if nerve cells were moved relatively large distances from their normal positions, they could follow novel routes to reach their correct targets. This finding proved there must be molecular factors that axons could follow to establish their connections.
The principles established by these experiments, conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s, have served as a road map for subsequent experiments by scientists around the world looking for molecular cues that can be used to repair damaged or improperly developed nervous systems. Her work has relevance to developing strategies for enhancing recovery following spinal cord or peripheral nerve injury.
Currently, Landmesser's lab studies various knockout mice and uses molecular biological tools to hunt for genes that distinguish different types of motor neurons, the nerve cells that control our muscles. In this way, she hopes to pinpoint the factors that produce the amazingly complex and precise connectivity found in our nervous system.
Landmesser joined CWRU in 1993 as a professor in the Department of Neurosciences. She came to CWRU from the University of Connecticut, where she had been a faculty member for 10 years. Prior to that, she was on the faculty at Yale University for 11 years.
She earned her Ph.D. in neurophysiology at the University of California in 1969, followed by postdoctoral work in physiology at the University of Utah College of Medicine.
She has served as president of the Society for Developmental Biology and secretary of the Society for Neuroscience, is president-elect of the Neuroscience Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH), and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among her other awards and honors are the McKnight Senior Investigator Award (1997), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), membership on the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives (1993), and two Jacob Javits Investigator awards (1985-92 and 1992-99).
As a teacher, Landmesser has advised a number of Ph.D. candidates, post-doctoral fellows, and research associates, many of whom hold academic appointments around the United States and abroad. She also lectures on neural development at the medical school and in several graduate courses.
In addition to holding two National Institutes of Health research awards, she is the principal investigator on an NIH Predoctoral Neurosciences Training Grant and co-principal investigator on an NIH Developmental Biology Training Grant.
The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.
Additional information about the institution is available on the Internet at http://national-academies.org. A full directory of NAS members is online at http://national-academies.org/nas.
