Penn State Intercom......September 21, 2000

U.S. Senate confirms Fedoroff
for National Science Board

The United States Senate has confirmed the nomination of Nina V. Fedoroff by President Clinton to serve as a member of the National Science Board (NSB). Fedoroff is professor of biology, the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences, director of the Life Sciences Consortium and director of tšhe Penn State Biotechnology Institute.

The NSB is composed of 24 part-time members who are selected on the basis of their eminence in science, engineering, education or research management to direct the activities of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Members of the board are nominated for four-year terms by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Fedoroff's areas of research, plant genetics and molecular biology, give her the background to deal with issues in plant-genetic and genomic research, as well as the genetic modification of plants, which are high priorities of the NSF.

Fedoroff is perhaps best known for her research on the molecular biology of mobile genetic elements, also known as transposons, in plants and on the developmental regulation of gene expression.

Among her accomplishments, she isolated and characterized the first complete maize transposable genetic element -- research that provided the molecular basis for understanding unusual phenomena first described in maize by Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock. Fedoroff later identified and studied the molecular mechanism of regulation of the maize suppressor-mutator element and also identified a unique regulatory protein encoded by this element.

Fedoroff is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi honorary societies, the board of directors of the Sigma-Aldrich Corp., the International Advisory Board to the Englehardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow and the editorial boards of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Plant Journal and Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

Fedoroff earned a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry, summa cum laude, at Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the Rockefeller University. She has served on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the board of directors of the International Science Foundation and the board of trustees of the Biological Sciences Information Service. She recently has been elected to the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She also has been involved in many professional activities in the national and international science communities.

Other current members of the National Science Board who have a Penn State connection include Eamon M. Kelly, chair of the National Science Board, who was an assistant professor of finance at Penn State from 1965 to 1968 and is now president emeritus and professor in the Payson Center for International Development and Technology Transfer at Tulane University; Warren M. Washington, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research climate and global dynamics division, who earned a doctorate at the University in 1964; and Joseph A. Miller Jr., Distinguished Alumnus and Alumni Fellow, who is a member of the National Research Council Center for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education and the senior vice president for research and development and chief science and technology officer at DuPont.