King and Henikoff Named to National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday, May 3, the election of Seattle researchers Mary-Claire King and Steven Henikoff as new members. Election to membership is one of the highest honors given in the United States to scientists and recognizes their distinguished, continuing achievements in original research. The election took place during the 142nd annual meeting of the academy.

King is the American Cancer Society research professor in the UW departments of medicine and genomic sciences. She holds an affiliate membership in clinical research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC). Her research interests include breast and ovarian cancer, inherited deafness, and systemic lupus erythematosus. Her lab also applies genomic sequencing in identifying victims of human rights abuses.

Henikoff is a member of the FHCRC basic sciences division, a UW affiliate professor of genome sciences, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He studies chromatin inheritance and centromere evolution and develops tools for interpreting sequence information and predicting harmful mutations. The Department of Genome Sciences now has eight people who are National Academy of Sciences members.