JAX Professor Ken Paigen receives Fulbright Award
JAX® NOTES Issue 513, Spring 2009
Insatiably curious and ever-ready to explore new scientific frontiers, Professor Kenneth Paigen, Ph.D., Executive Research Fellow at JAX, spent the month of November at France's Pasteur Institute collaborating with other researchers to better understand the processes that lead to genetic diversity. Professor Paigen traveled to France as one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals receiving a Fulbright Senior Specialists Award.
As Professor Paigen explains, "In the course of making sperm and eggs, our chromosomes engage in an intricate dance in which they exchange parts. That is what ensures new genetic diversity at every generation; it is what makes every one of us a totally unique individual. Any failure to carry out this exchange, what geneticists call recombination, causes sterility. There is much that we know about the underlying processes of recombination, and even more that we don't."
Initiated in 2000 by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Senior Specialists Award is given to recipients based on superior academic or professional achievement. It provides prominent U.S. faculty and professionals with two- to six-week opportunities to develop post secondary curricula worldwide. Past winners include Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board of Intel Corporation.
