On Oct. 20 throughout its annual assembly, the National Academy of Medicine introduced the election of 100 new members, together with MIT college members Dina Katabi and Facundo Batista, alongside with three further MIT alumni.
Election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is taken into account one of the very best honors within the fields of well being and drugs, recognizing people who’ve demonstrated excellent skilled achievement and dedication to service.
Facundo Batista is the affiliate director and scientific director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, in addition to the primary Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Professor within the MIT Department of Biology. The National Academy of Medicine acknowledged Batista for “his work unraveling the biology of antibody-producing B cells to better understand how our body’s immune systems responds to infectious disease.” More not too long ago, Facundo’s analysis has superior preclinical vaccine and therapeutic growth for globally necessary illnesses together with HIV, malaria, and influenza.
Batista earned a PhD from the International School of Advanced Studies and established his lab in 2002 as a member of the Francis Crick Institute (previously the London Research Institute), concurrently holding a professorship at Imperial College London. In 2016, he joined the Ragon Institute to pursue a brand new analysis program making use of his experience in B cells and antibody responses to vaccine growth, and preclinical vaccinology for illnesses together with SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. Batista is an elected fellow or member of the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, the Academia de Ciencias de América Latina, and the European Molecular Biology Organization, and he’s chief editor of The EMBO Journal.
Dina Katabi SM ’99, PhD ’03 is the Thuan (1990) and Nicole Pham Professor within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Her analysis spans digital well being, wi-fi sensing, cellular computing, machine studying, and laptop imaginative and prescient. Katabi’s contributions embody environment friendly communication protocols for the web, superior contactless biosensors, and novel AI fashions that interpret physiological alerts. The NAM acknowledged Katabi for “pioneering digital health technology that enables non-invasive, off-body remote health monitoring via AI and wireless signals, and for developing digital biomarkers for Parkinson’s progression and detection. She has translated this technology to advance objective, sensitive measures of disease trajectory and treatment response in clinical trials.”
Katabi is director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing. She can be a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the place she leads the Networks at MIT Research Group. Katabi obtained a bachelor’s diploma from the University of Damascus and MS and PhD levels in laptop science from MIT. She is a MacArthur Fellow; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Engineering; and a recipient of the ACM Computing Prize.
Additional MIT alumni who have been elected to the NAM for 2025 are:
- Christopher S. Chen SM ’93, PhD ’97, an alumnus of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology;
- Michael E. Matheny SM ’06, an alumnus of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology; and
- Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum SM ’87, PhD ’90, and alumna of the Department of Physics and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.
Established initially because the Institute of Medicine in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine addresses important points in well being, science, drugs, and associated coverage, and conjures up constructive actions throughout sectors.
“I am deeply honored to welcome these extraordinary health and medicine leaders and researchers into the National Academy of Medicine,” says NAM President Victor J. Dzau. “Their demonstrated excellence in tackling public health challenges, leading major discoveries, improving health care, advancing health policy, and addressing health equity will critically strengthen our collective ability to tackle the most pressing health challenges of our time.”