Neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, developmental geneticist Thomas Kornberg, PhD, and virologist Raul Andino-Pavlovsky, PhD, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors in American science.
Only a few neurosurgeons have been elected to NAS. Chang was honored for his transformative research into how the human brain perceives and produces speech. His team has identified a neural code for spoken words, including consonants, vowels, and prosody, and how these relate to both auditory perception and vocal motor control.
These insights have reshaped the understanding of the neural basis of speech, and they have led to the first successful “speech neuroprosthesis.”
In 2021, his team decoded full words and sentences from the brain activity of a severely paralyzed man, allowing him to communicate short sentences using text. In 2023, Chang expanded the work to include speech synthesis and control over a digital facial avatar.
Recently, his team was able to decode speech from real-time brain recordings to produce a synthesized voice. Chang is the Joan and Sandy Weill Chair of Neurological Surgery and Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020.
Kornberg, who joined UC San Francisco in 1978, has made major discoveries about the way cells communicate with each other to direct development.
For decades, scientists thought that molecules carrying signals from one cell to another traveled by random diffusion. Kornberg, using the fruit fly Drosophila as a model, discovered that cells can actually direct signals specifically to other cells by creating thin tubes of cellular material that he called cytonemes.
He later showed that cytonemes can extend over long distances to deliver the key signals that direct cells to adopt specialized traits and to form organs during development. In 2019, he found that cytonemes behave in a way so similar to nerve transmission that they may have been the evolutionary precursors to the connective structures neurons use.
Kornberg is also an accomplished cellist. He studied at the Juilliard School as an undergraduate and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
Andino-Pavlovsky’s work focuses on RNA virus biology. His research has examined viral replication, vaccine development, and antiviral mechanisms.
He has uncovered key insights into one of the mechanisms that insects use to repel viruses, RNA interference (RNAi). His lab has also developed experimental and computational tools to study the evolution of RNA viruses, linking their genetic diversity to their ability to survive and adapt.
This research has helped Andino-Pavlovsky develop disease control strategies, such as the novel oral poliovirus vaccine. Over the past three years, nearly 1.4 billion doses of this novel vaccine have been administered across 35 countries, interrupting several epidemics.
This is a prime example of scientific innovation driving global health action through collaboration. Andino-Pavlovsky’s research has pushed boundaries, advancing science, virology, and public health worldwide. He is the recipient of the M.W. Beijerinck Virology Prize, the Humboldt Research Award, and the John J. Holland Award.
NAS is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and, with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.