About Us
Scientific Advisory Board | Back to Overview
-
Bonnie Bassler
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton University
Dr. Bassler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The research in her laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication, a process called quorum sensing. Dr. Bassler chairs Princeton University’s Council on Science and Technology, she is the Director of Graduate Studies in the Molecular Biology Department, and she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. Dr. Bassler was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2002. She was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2002 and made a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004. She was given the 2003 Theobald Smith Society Waksman Award and she is the 2006 recipient of the American Society for Microbiology’s Eli Lilly Investigator Award for fundamental contributions to microbiological research. In 2008, Dr. Bassler was given Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. Dr. Bassler is an editor for Molecular Microbiology and Annual Reviews of Genetics, and she is an associate editor for the Journal of Bacteriology. Among other duties, she serves on grant, fellowship, and award review panels for the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, American Society for Microbiology, American Academy of Microbiology, Keck Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Trust, Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, and the Max Planck Society. She received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University.
-
Steven Leath
Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs, University of North Carolina System and Professor of Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University
Dr. Leath serves as Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs for the University of North Carolina System and is a tenured Professor of Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University. As Vice President, Dr. Leath oversees and promotes research and sponsored programs across the full spectrum of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary activities carried out by UNC’s sixteen university campuses. He advocates for increased levels of external support from federal, state, and private sources, and works closely with the President and campus research administrators to develop research and sponsored program activity in support of each campus’s mission. In his capacity he has oversight of more than $1 billion in competitive research grants and contracts annually—mostly from the federal government. Dr. Leath, who has been affiliated with NC State for more than two decades, holds a bachelor’s degree in plant science from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in the field from the University of Delaware, and a doctorate in plant pathology from the University of Illinois. He first joined the faculty of NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1985 as a plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service unit based on the NC State campus. He was named research leader of the unit in 1998, shortly before beginning a stint as the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s acting national program leader for grain crops. Dr. Leath returned to NC State in 2001 as a professor and assistant director of the NC Agricultural Research Service. Shortly after being promoted to associate director of the Research Service in 2003, he was named interim director and interim associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He assumed both positions on a permanent basis in 2005, and was named Vice President of Research and Sponsored Programs of the UNC System in 2007. During his research career, Dr. Leath has served on numerous boards, grant panels, editorial boards and has published numerous scientific articles in plant disease resistance, plant breeding and related fields and has in cooperation with colleagues developed many disease resistant germplasm lines.
-
Michael Luther
President, David H. Murdock Research Institute
Dr. Luther is the President of the David H. Murdock Research Institute (DHMRI) at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, NC. Prior to joining the DHMRI, Dr. Luther was Vice President and Site Head for the Merck Frosst Center for Therapeutic Research in Canada. Previously Dr. Luther was at GlaxoSmithKline where he was the Vice President in Discovery Research. He also worked at Glaxo and Glaxo-Wellcome in a number of increasing roles of responsibility including creating and leading a business unit focused on the integration of diagnostics and therapeutics called Predictive Medicine. This role involved the licensing of technologies, tests and contractual agreements to facilitate integration of biomarkers with drugs from early development to post-launch. Earlier in his career, Dr. Luther helped launch and build a biotechnology start-up company, Procept, in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Luther received his Ph.D. in physical biochemistry from St. Louis University School of Medicine and completed post-doctoral studies at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he was a Muscular Dystrophy Fellow. Dr. Luther also has an MBA from the Fuqua Business School at Duke University and a BS in Biochemistry from North Carolina State University.