Researchers Honored by American Association for the Advancement of Science

By Sathya Achia Abraham, Mike Porter and Molly McElroy

Two Virginia Commonwealth University professors have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., an internationally renowned researcher and professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, was recognized for her discovery of a potent lipid mediator with important roles in cancer, inflammation and allergy. Audrey Smedley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology with a joint appointment in African American Studies, was recognized for her contributions to anthropology and the history of race and race relations in the United States.

Spiegel and Smedley were among 486 individuals honored by the AAAS on the basis of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications. 

Spiegel was selected for her discovery that sphingosine-1-phosphate, or S1P, is a bioactive lipid mediatory that regulates vital physiological processes important for health and diseases. Spiegel’s contributions to this research have opened new avenues for drug development to fight these diseases. She developed the concept that sphingolipid metabolites serve as signaling molecules, and S1P, which she discovered in the early 1990s, is now the most thoroughly characterized and widely accepted mediator in this field. 

Spiegel, who is also the program co-leader of the Cancer Cell Biology Program at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the Mann T. and Sara D. Lowry professor of oncology, has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health to continuously fund her research for nearly 20 years.

Smedley, who retired from VCU in 2002, was recognized for distinguished contributions to the anthropology and history of race and race relations in the United States and for writings that have increased public awareness of the fallacies of race.

Smedley has written on the history of anthropology and the origin and evolution of the idea of race since the late 1970s. Her comprehensive book on the subject, “Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview,” examines the idea that race has no basis in biology or science but is a cultural invention by wealthy plantation owners at the turn of the 18th century to rationalize slavery. The book was first published in 1993 and is now in its third edition.

The election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. Fellows were announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the Dec. 19 issue of the journal Science. New fellows will be recognized in February at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The tradition of AAAS fellows began in 1874. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes approximately 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.