Werner-Washburne Appointed to Advisory Council of National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Mag­gie Werner-Washburne, a Regents’ Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico and a mem­ber of the UNM Can­cer Cen­ter, has been appointed to the advi­sory coun­cil of the National Insti­tute of Gen­eral Med­ical Sci­ences (NIGMS). Part of the National Insti­tutes of Health, NIGMS sup­ports research that increases our under­stand­ing of life processes and lays the foun­da­tion for advances in dis­ease diag­no­sis, treat­ment and prevention.

As a NIGMS advi­sory coun­cil mem­ber, Werner-Washburne joins a group of the nation’s lead­ers in the bio­log­i­cal and med­ical sci­ences, edu­ca­tion, health­care and pub­lic affairs. The coun­cil pro­vides the final level of peer review for NIGMS research and research train­ing grant appli­ca­tions – a func­tion that is essen­tial to fund­ing the high­est qual­ity research and train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists. In addi­tion, coun­cil mem­bers offer advice and rec­om­men­da­tions on pol­icy and pro­gram devel­op­ment, pro­gram imple­men­ta­tion, eval­u­a­tion and other mat­ters of sig­nif­i­cance to NIGMS.

NIGMS-funded researchers seek to answer impor­tant sci­en­tific ques­tions in a wide range of fields. Werner-Washburne is extra­or­di­nar­ily well-suited to eval­u­at­ing the mer­its of such research. She has made a career of study­ing tiny organ­isms – yeast cells – and find­ing in their sta­tion­ary (non-dividing) phase clues to some of biology’s biggest ques­tions, includ­ing the mechan­ics of aging and gen­e­sis of cancer.

In addi­tion, Werner-Washburne has been involved in run­ning the NIH-funded Ini­tia­tives to Max­i­mize Stu­dent Diver­sity pro­gram, which has trained almost 200 under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents at UNM in the past seven years. Inter­na­tion­ally known for both her sci­en­tific con­tri­bu­tions and stu­dent men­tor­ing, Werner-Washburne has gar­nered numer­ous local and national sci­en­tific awards and hon­ors. Last spring, she received Har­vard Foundation’s 2011 Dis­tin­guished Sci­en­tist Award, one of the nation’s top acknowl­edge­ments for sci­en­tific excel­lence and service.