By Bob Shepard
UAB News
Two scientists on the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been named to a list of 100 inspiring black scientists in America by Cross Talk, the official blog of Cell Press, a leading publisher of cutting-edge biomedical and physical science research and reviews.
Farah Lubin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology, and Michelle Gray, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurology, made the list.
The blog’s guest author is Antentor O. Hinton Jr., Ph.D., a Ford Foundation and Burroughs Wellcome Fund postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iowa.
“There’s a plethora of black scientists who make significant contributions to science, but many of them are unknown to the masses,” Hinton said. “It’s imperative that young black scientists know about the myriad accomplished scientists from African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and African American backgrounds in the fields of life sciences, chemistry, engineering and physics.”
Lubin is the director of the NINDS-funded Neuroscience Roadmap Scholar Program. She is also a scientist in the Comprehensive Center for Healthy Aging, the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center, the Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics, and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. Her research focuses on learning, memory and synaptic plasticity, epigenetics, non-coding RNAs gene transcription, epilepsy disorders, neurodevelopment, and developmental disabilities.
Gray is the Dixon Scholar in Neuroscience in the Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics, a scientist in the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, and co-director for the School of Medicine’s Summer in Biomedical Sciences Undergraduate Research Program. Her research focuses on the pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease with a specific interest in astrocytes, as well as cardiac abnormalities in Huntington’s disease and X-linked dystonia Parkinsonism.
The list includes 75 established investigators, including Lubin and Gray, who range from tenure track assistant professors to full professors and 25 scientists whom the author labels as rising stars.
“Our hope is that this resource will have a significant and long-lasting effect on all members of the scientific community and continue to emphasize the need for diversity in the academy,” Hinton wrote.
The list features 75 established investigators and 25 scientists coined “rising stars.”
