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AAAS recognizes Ulrike Heberlein and Nelson Spruston for meritorious efforts to advance science.
Janelia Research Campus
AAAS recognizes Ulrike Heberlein and Nelson Spruston for meritorious efforts to advance science.


Ulrike Heberlein and Nelson Spruston of the Janelia Farm Research Campus have been elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers. Fellows are recognized for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications.

Heberlein is being recognized in the AAAS Section of Biological Sciences, while Spruston is being recognized in the Section of Neuroscience. They will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments, at the Fellows Forum, during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 16, 2013.

AAAS is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world. It was founded in 1848, and serves 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. It also publishes the journal Science, as well as many scientific newsletters, books and reports.

Heberlein is a Scientific Program Director and a Laboratory Head at Janelia. She served as a professor at the Department of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) before coming to Janelia in 2012. In addition to her Janelia appointment, Heberlein continues at UCSF as an adjunct professor. Heberlein uses the fruit fly Drosophila to study the mechanisms by which experiences induce long-lasting changes in behavior using genetic, genomic, and neuroanatomical approaches.

Spruston is also a Scientific Program Director and Laboratory Head at Janelia, where he studies the hippocampus, a brain structure involved in memory. He deciphers how individual neurons in the hippocampus integrate and compute the inputs they receive to produce an outgoing signal. Spruston served on the faculty at Northwestern University for 16 years before coming to Janelia in 2011.

Heberlein and Spruston are among 701 AAAS Fellows elected in October 2012 in recognition of their contributions to science and technology. The complete list of new Fellows is available here: https://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-members-elected-fellows-1external link, opens in a new tab