Marina Picciotto, PhD, Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and professor in the Child Study Center, of neuroscience and of pharmacology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The academy honors excellence and convenes leaders to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and advance the public good. It was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and other early leaders of America with the purpose of honoring exceptionally accomplished individuals and engaging them in the betterment of society. Members include more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Picciotto joined the Yale faculty in 1995. She holds numerous leadership positions at Yale School of Medicine. She is deputy chair for basic science research and director of the Division of Molecular Psychiatry in the Yale Department of Psychiatry and director of the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, the largest doctoral program in the biological and biomedical sciences at Yale.
She is deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience and is a leader in the national and international neuroscience community, serving as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience until last year. She is currently president of the 35,000-member Society for Neuroscience.
In 2000 she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering by President Clinton and in 2012 she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was chair of the Neuroscience Section from 2018-2019.
Picciotto has been awarded the Human Frontiers 10th Anniversary Award, the Jacob P. Waletzky Award for addiction research and the Bernice Grafstein Mentorship award from the Society for Neuroscience, the Marion Spencer Fay Award from Drexel University, the Langley Award from SRNT, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for Innovative Research and the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences.
“We are so pleased to see Marina recognized with this well-deserved honor for her trailblazing science and her transformative scientific leadership,” said John H. Krystal, MD, chair of the Yale Department of Psychiatry. “We, at Yale, are greatly enriched by her presence in our community.”
She has been invited to participate with other newly elected members in the 2024 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Induction on September 20-21, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass, where the academy’s headquarters is located.
The academy has elected more than 13,500 members since its founding. Among the distinguished individuals who have been honored with membership are Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Georgia O’Keefe, Charles Darwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Margaret Mead, Anna Deavere Smith, Angela Davis, and Anthony Fauci. For a full list of members, visit the academy’s website.