UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences Craig S. Semon

UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Craig S. Semon Telegram & Gazette Staff Posted Apr 29, 2020

UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson has been elected to this year’s class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“It is a great honor to be recognized by one’s guild — in my case the profession of cell biology,” Pederson said. “But that this venerable institution is one of both the arts and the sciences adds so much to my sense of profound privilege in having been elected.”

Pederson is the Vitold Arnett professor of cell biology, associate vice chancellor for research and professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at UMass.

A longtime scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Sciences, Pederson served as the foundation’s president from 1985 until its merger with UMass in 1997.

Pederson’s election to the academy recognizes his career of research on the functional organization of the cell nucleus, including specific associations between RNAs and proteins to form machines that underlie gene readout. He has also made transformative discoveries about the nucleolus.

Most recently Pederson and collaborators have designed CRISPR-based methods to probe the fine-scale movements of specific genomic loci.

Reprinted with permission from the Worcester T&G