Professors Anne Andrews and Heather Maynard have been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.
The inductees were nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows for outstanding contributions to particular research areas – Andrews for developing and applying the tools to eavesdrop on chemical communication in the brain by measuring neurotransmitters in vivo, and Maynard for paradigm-shifting contributions to the synthesis of protein-polymer conjugates, protein stabilization, and protein drug delivery for disease treatment.
A formal induction ceremony will be held during AIMBE’s 2021 Annual Event on March 26. Professors Andrews and Maynard will be inducted along with 173 colleagues who make up the AIMBE Fellow Class of 2021. For more information about the AIMBE Annual Event, please visit www.aimbe.org.
As a faculty member in the UCLA Departments of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences,
leads efforts in basic and translational research on anxiety and depression, and at the nexus of neuroscience and nanoscience. Her interdisciplinary research team focuses on discovering, developing, and using in vivo neurotransmitter monitoring approaches to understand how serotonin and other neurotransmitter systems encode emotionally salient information.
Andrews was recently named an IUPAC Distinguished Woman in Chemistry and has received an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award. She has also been the recipient of a California Neurotechnologies Research Award, a NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, an American Parkinson’s Disease Association Research Award, an Eli Lily Outstanding Young Analytical Chemist Award, and an NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence, among others. She was Associate Editor for ACS Chemical Neuroscience and is currently a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and President of the International Society for Serotonin Research.
holds UCLA’s Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Polymer Science. She is a worldwide leader in the area of protein-polymer conjugates, which are important therapeutics for a variety of diseases. She develops new synthetic methods to make the materials, invents new polymers to improve properties such as stability, and demonstrates preclinical efficacy of her conjugates with an eye towards translation for human health. Maynard also works in the area of smart materials for precision medicine: materials that respond to disease states in the body.
Maynard’s research and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards including the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, Fulbright Specialist Award, Seaborg Award, Bioconjugate Chemistry Lectureship Award, Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching and the UCLA Student Development Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award. Maynard is both an American Chemical Society Polymer Chemistry and Polymer Materials: Science and Engineering Fellow. She is also a Leverhulme, Kavli Frontiers, and Royal Society of Chemistry Fellow, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a member of the United States Defense Science Study Group from 2016-2017.
Maynard is Director of the National Institutes of Health funded Chemistry Biology Interface Training Program and Associate Director for the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. She is also the co-Director of the new $23.7 million NSF funded BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform at UCLA and UCSB.
The College of Fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country. The most accomplished and distinguished engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, professors, innovators, and successful entrepreneurs comprise the College of Fellows. AIMBE Fellows are regularly recognized for their contributions in teaching, research, and innovation. AIMBE Fellows have been awarded the Nobel Prize, the Presidential Medal of Science, and the Presidential Medal of Technology and Innovation and many also are members of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Other AIMBE fellows in the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry include Professors Timothy Deming (2010), Paul Weiss (2016), and Gerard Wong (2018).
AIMBE’s mission is to recognize excellence in, and advocate for, the fields of medical and biological engineering in order to advance society. Since 1991, AIMBE’s College of Fellows has led the way for technological growth and advancement in the fields of medical and biological engineering. AIMBE Fellows have helped revolutionize medicine and related fields to enhance and extend the lives of people all over the world. They have successfully advocated for public policies that have enabled researchers and business-makers to further the interests of engineers, teachers, scientists, clinical practitioners, and ultimately, patients.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
