May 2025: Nussinov elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences

Congratulations to Dr. Ruth Nussinov, Edmond J. Safra emeritus member (Medicine), who was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of 120 new members and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.  The US National Academy of Sciences advises the American government and nation on matters of science, engineering, and medicine, and membership in the Academy is lifelong. The Academy includes approximately 2,600 American scientists from all fields of science and about 550 foreign scientists from all over the world.

Dr. Nussinov, Emeritus member of the Edmond J. Safra Center, is a Senior Principal Investigator with the NCI Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research and CCR’s Cancer Innovation Laboratory. Dr. Nussinov, a computational structural biologist, has made significant contributions to the field of RNA folding. In the 1990s, she introduced the groundbreaking concept of “conformational selection and population shift,” challenging the existing belief that only one or two protein conformations are functional. Her idea, which has since been confirmed by numerous experiments, explains how proteins can exist in multiple forms and how their dynamic shifts are crucial for functions such as catalysis and regulation. This paradigm shift has advanced our understanding of molecular recognition, signaling and diseases mechanisms, including cancer and amyloid diseases, and has influenced the development of allosteric drugs. Her recent work includes developing software for kinase drug selectivity.  

Being elected to the Academy is an exceptional honor, as it reflects widespread recognition by all members of the Academy, from diverse scientific fields. 

Dr. Nussinov joins Prof. Yoav Benjamini, Edmond J. Safra member (Statistics and Operations Research), who was elected to NAS on May 2020, and Prof. Yosef Shiloh, Edmond J. Safra member (Medicine), who was elected to NAS on May 2023 – both as international members.