Olsen Named Senior Scientific Award Recipient

Bjorn Olsen, M.D., Ph.D. will receive the 2006 Senior Scientifi Award. Olsen is currently the Hersey Professor of Cell Biology, at Harvard Medical School and Professor and Chair of Oral and Developmental Biology, at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Bjorn has made important contributions to the field of matrix biology and has discovered several collagens, including collagen type XVIII/endostatin. His recent work focuses on several areas including skeletal and vascular morphogenesis, growth and remodeling/repair, genetic causes of degenerative joint disease (osteoarthritis) in humans and mice, and molecular mechanisms that lead to neoformation of dermal tissue in fibrotic diseases. Bjorn is the Editor-In-Chief of Matrix Biology.

Calderwood Will Be The ASMB Junior Scientific Award Recipient

David A Calderwood, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, at Yale University School of Medicine. After obtaining a doctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Manchester with Dr. Martin Humphries, David spent several productive years in San Diego at Scripps with Dr. Mark Ginsberg. Since 2004, David has been an independent investigator at Yale and secured funding from the NIH and the American Heart Association. He has made important contributions to the integrin field including a detailed analysis of the ligand binding domains of integrins and deciphering the role of talin in integrin activation and transdominant inhibition. More recently, Dave’s laboratory has published a landmark paper reporting the structural basis of filamin interaction with integrins and how it regulates integrin function.