2014 Judson Daland Prize

2014 Autumn General Meeting

Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Investigation

Howard Y. Chang

The 2014 recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Patient-oriented Clinical Investigation is Howard Y. Chang in recognition of his discovery of the existence and function of a new class of pervasive genes in the human genome, termed long noncoding RNAs (1ncRNAs). Dr Chang's research is focused on mechanisms that coordinate the activities of genes that control cell fate. He has pioneered methods to identify key regulators of large-scale transcriptional programs important in development of cancer, aging and response to infections. His discoveries have introduced the important and pervasive roles of long noncoding RNAs in chromatin regulation. He also invented the first method to map RNA occupancy of chromatin genome-wide, revealing that each lRNA can interact extensively with hundreds or thousands of sites across the genome.

Dr. Chang received a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and an M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 2000. He completed his residency and postdoc in dermatology and genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine in 2004, and became an assistant professor in its Department of Dermatology. He is currently a professor of dermatology at Stanford and Early Career Scientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The Daland Prize selection committee consisted of Clyde F. Barker (chair), Donald Guthrie Professor of Surgery, University of Pennsylvania; John N. Loeb, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Columbia University; Arno Motulsky, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Genome Sciences, University of Washington; and Thomas E. Starzl, Professor of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.