A neuroscientist and a veterinary virologist at UC Davis were elected Tuesday to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors accorded to scientists and engineers in the United States.
Edward "Ted" Jones, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Neuroscience, and Tilahun Yilma, a professor of virology and director of the International Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Tropical Disease Agents, are among 72 new U.S. members and 18 foreign associates chosen this year.
Overall, 15 new members were elected from UC -- four each from Berkeley and San Francisco, two each from Davis and San Diego, and one each from Irvine, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Additionally, one member was elected from the UC-administered Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
"Membership in the National Academy of Sciences is arguably the highest and most prestigious honor that the country gives to a researcher," said Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. "This recognition speaks to the quality of Professor Jones' and Professor Yilma's scholarly work. We couldn't be prouder of their accomplishments."
The researchers were notified with 6 a.m. calls from colleagues at the academy. Jones was away from campus, and for Yilma the day would be business-as-usual as he prepared to head to Washington, D.C., for a National Institutes of Health meeting of smallpox vaccine researchers. "But that's a great way to celebrate -- to do the science," Yilma said.
Edward Jones, 65, has been a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1998, when he was named director of the Center for Neuroscience and professor of psychiatry. He is an authority on brain anatomy and is recognized as a leading researcher of the central nervous system.
He has done groundbreaking work on schizophrenia, focusing on how changes at the molecular and cellular level are associated with the disorder. His studies have shown that seemingly minute abnormalities in human brains can cause chemical imbalances and lead to schizophrenia and other serious, long-term nervous-system disorders.
He also belongs to a group of scientists working on the nation's Human Brain Project, which supports development of databases on the brain and of technologies for managing and sharing neuroscience information.
Jones received his medical degree in 1962 from the University of Otago Medical School. He earned his doctoral degree in neuroanatomy in 1968 from the University of Oxford, England. After teaching at Oxford and in New Zealand, he joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., in 1972.
In 1984, having established his reputation as a preeminent neuroanatomist, he became chair of the department of anatomy and neurobiology at UC Irvine.
His leadership in the international neuroscience community has included serving as director of the Neural Systems Laboratory of the RIKEN Frontier Research Program in Japan. In 1998, he was elected president of the Society for Neuroscience, a worldwide organization of more than 28,000 scientists and physicians.
Tilahun Yilma, 60, was born in Ethiopia. He earned his bachelor's degree in veterinary science in 1968 and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree in 1970, both from UC Davis. He then returned to Ethiopia and spent two years as a veterinarian vaccinating nomadic cattle herds against rinderpest, a deadly viral disease affecting cattle and wildlife.
In 1977, he earned a doctoral degree in microbiology and joined the UC Davis faculty as an assistant professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine. He worked for three years at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York. He then served five years as a faculty member at Washington State University, returning to UC Davis in 1986.
One of Yilma's landmark achievements has been development in 1986 of a genetically engineered vaccine for rinderpest, which was approved in 1997 for widespread use throughout Africa. It was the first genetically engineered vaccine to be released by a U.S.-funded researcher in a foreign country. He went on to develop rinderpest diagnostic kits and organize training to make the kits available to African scientists. His current research is aimed at developing an AIDS vaccine and improved smallpox vaccine. In addition, he has devoted extensive efforts to securing funding for biotechnology laboratories in developing nations.
Over the years, his accomplishments have been recognized with numerous professional and campus awards including the Smith Kline Beecham Award for Excellence in Research in 1988, the Ciba-Geigy Award for Research in Animal Science in 1989, the UC Davis Distinguished Public Service Award in 1994 and the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecturer Award in 2002.