NEWS INDEX Archives 2004 November

Head of cell and structural biology department at Illinois is honored

Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor
217-333-5802; jebarlow@uiuc.edu

11/1/04

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Martha U. Gillette of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign has been recognized for “her career achievements in neuroscience as a scientist, teacher and mentor.” She received the 2004 Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award by Women in Neuroscience during the recent Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Gillette, who studies the mechanisms that regulate the brain’s circadian clock, is the head of the department of cell and structural biology and a professor of molecular and integrative physiology. She also has an appointment in the Institute for Genomic Biology and co-chairs two Chancellor’s Cross-Campus Initiatives.

The award’s recognition also covered her mentoring since 1986 of numerous female medical scholars and female graduate and postdoctoral researchers. An advocate of the study of sleep disorders, Gillette is the associate editor of the journal Sleep, vice president of the National Sleep Foundation and president-elect of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms.

Gillette, who joined the U. of I. faculty in 1989, is the fifth recipient of the Mika Salpeter award, which was created in memory of Dr. Mariam (Mika) Salpeter, who died in 2000. Salpeter’s long and notable career in research established the foundations of quantitative molecular anatomy. Salpeter also was instrumental in creating opportunities for women at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.