Reinhard C. Laubenbacher, Ph.D. of UConn Health and The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) for Genomic Medicine has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. As part of the Mathematics Section, Laubenbacher was elected as an AAAS Fellow for distinguished contributions to the construction and analysis in systems biology, based on computational algebra, discrete mathematics and algebraic geometry.
“The invitation to join such a distinguished group of scientists is a tremendous personal honor,” Laubenbacher says. “I also see it as a recognition of the great value that mathematics brings to the life sciences at a time of unprecedented challenge and opportunity.”
Laubenbacher joined JAX Genomic Medicine in May 2013 as professor of computational biology. As the first joint UConn Health/JAX faculty member, he is also professor in the UConn Health department of cell biology and director of the Center for Quantitative Medicine.
Laubenbacher’s previous academic service included positions as professor and director of education and outreach at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, professor in the Virginia Tech Mathematics Department and professor of mathematical sciences at New Mexico State University.
Laubenbacher is a graduate of the University of Munich and earned advanced degrees in mathematics from Indiana University and Northwestern University. He has received numerous teaching and scholarly awards throughout his career, including a Fulbright Scholarship and becoming a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In addition, Laubenbacher is widely published in scholarly journals in areas including computational biology, systems biology and mathematical foundations of computer simulation.
This year 347 members have been awarded the honor of AAAS Fellow because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be recognized on Saturday, Feb.13 during the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling (www.sciencesignaling.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 254 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million.
UConn Health is an integrated academic medical center based in Farmington, Conn., home to the School of Medicine, School of Dental Medicine, John Dempsey Hospital, UConn Medical Group, UConn Health Partners, University Dentists and a thriving research enterprise. With more than 5,000 employees, UConn Health is a major economic driver in the region, generating nearly $1 billion annually in gross state product. It is closely linked with the University of Connecticut’s main campus in Storrs through multiple, cross-campus academic projects.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. It employs 1,700 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.