April 20, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

Please join me in congratulating Johns Hopkins faculty members Richard Huganir and Diane Griffin, who were among 72 of the nation's top scientists elected today to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. They join 15 other Hopkins faculty currently in the Academy.

Richard Huganir, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and of biological chemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the School of Medicine, studies how molecular signals created and received by nerves in the brain allow complex phenomena such as learning and memory. Last year, he and his colleagues discovered a critically important step in storing new memories, leading to development of al mouse. He joined the faculty in 1988.

Diane Griffin, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health since 1994, and professor of medicine and neurology at the School of Medicine, studies viral infection and immune responses against them. She and her colleagues are investigating Sindbis virus, which causes inflammation of the brain in mice, as well as the measles virus and its suppression of the immune system and HIV replication in people. She came to Hopkins in 1970.

This newest honor is a tribute to the high caliber and importance of their work and of the esteem for them in the scientific world.

Sincerely,

Edward D. Miller, M.D.