2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Dr. Adrian R. Krainer is the St. Giles Foundation Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Deputy Director of Research at the CSHL Cancer Center. He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 1986, working with Prof. Tom Maniatis on pre-mRNA splicing mechanisms. He continued his research on splicing as a Cold Spring Harbor Fellow, mentored by Dr. Richard J. Roberts, and joined the faculty at Cold Spring Harbor in 1989. In addition to studying RNA splicing mechanisms, regulation, and dysfunction in disease, his laboratory is engaged in the development of mechanism-based targeted therapies to correct or modulate alternative splicing in genetic diseases and cancer. This work has resulted to date in 228 publications and 13 issued patents. In collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Biogen, Dr. Krainer’s laboratory developed nusinersen (Spinraza), which corrects the splicing defect in the SMN2 pre-mRNA and became the first approved therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic motor-neuron disease.

Dr. Krainer is a co-founder, Director, and Chair of the SAB of Stoke Therapeutics. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Recent awards include the 2019 Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize (shared with Dr. Frank Bennett), the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award of the RNA Society, the 2019 International Prize for Translational Neuroscience (shared with Dr. Richard Finkel), the 2020 Takeda Pharmaceuticals & NY Academy of Sciences Innovators in Science Senior Scientist Award in Rare Diseases, the 2020 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine (Feinstein Institute), the 2021 Wolf Prize in Medicine (shared with Drs. Joan Steitz and Lynne Maquat), the 2021 Gabbay Award in Biotechnology & Medicine (Brandeis University, shared with Dr. Frank Bennett),and the 2022 August M.Watanabe Prize (Indiana University,School of Medicine).

Maria Barna, PhD, Associate Professor

Department of Genetics - Stanford University

Maria Barna is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. Dr. Barna obtained her B.A. in Anthropology from New York University and her Ph.D. from Cornell University, Weill Graduate School of Medicine. She completed her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Lee Niswander in the Developmental Biology Department at Sloan Kettering Institute in 2007. Dr. Barna was subsequently appointed as a UCSF Fellow through the Sandler Fellows program, which enables exceptionally promising young scientists to establish independent research programs immediately following graduate school. Dr. Barna has received a number of distinctions including being named a Pew Scholar, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and top ’40 under 40’ by the Cell Journal.

She has received the Basil O’ Connor Scholar Research Award and the NIH Directors New Innovator Award. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award, an award given to two female scientists in the world every three years in the field of genetics, the American Society for Cell Biology Emerging Leader Prize, and the RNA Society Early Career Award. She has also received the inaugural Elizabeth Hay award from the Society of Developmental Biology, the H.W. Mossman Award in Developmental Biology and the Tsuneko and Reiji “Okazaki” Award, among others. She is presently a NYSCF Robertson Stem Cell Investigator.

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Douglas Black, PhD, Distinguished Professor

Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics - University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Douglas L. Black is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA and UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.  Douglas Black earned his B.A. with highest honors in Chemistry at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He received his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University working with Dr. Joan A. Steitz. He did postdoctoral work at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and MIT, working with Drs. David Baltimore, Don Rio, and Phillip Sharp. He started his faculty position at UCLA in 1992.

Dr. Black is an RNA biologist who studies the mechanisms that regulate alternative pre-mRNA splicing in mammalian cells and the role of posttranscriptional gene regulation in neuronal development and other cellular processes. His studies have been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a variety of private disease foundations. Dr. Black was a recipient of fellowships from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and the Packard Foundation for Science and Engineering. He has served as President of the RNA Society, and on numerous editorial boards, scientific advisory boards, and review panels.

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Hailing Jin, PhD, Professor and Plant Molecular Geneticist Biology

Microbiology & Plant Pathology - University of California, Riverside

Dr. Hailing Jin is the Cy Mouradick Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Microbiology and of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Riverside. She has been internationally recognized as a leader in the field of small RNAs and epigenetics in plant-microbial interactions. Her lab discovered cross-kingdom RNAi between plant hosts and fungal pathogens, and unveiled the important role of extracellular vesicles in small RNA trafficking between hosts and pathogens. Hailing Jin received her PhD from the Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She conducted postdoctoral work at the John Innes Center and University of California, Berkeley before she became an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside in 2004. She was promoted to an associate professor in 2009 and a full professor in 2013.

She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015, a fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and a CIFAR Fellow (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) in 2019. She received Ruth Allen Award from American Phytopathology Society in 2017. She was also recognized as a highly cited researcher by Web of Science in 2019. She was elected as a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2022.

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Liana Lareau, PhD, Assistant Professor

Department of Bioengineering - University of California, Berkeley

Liana Lareau works to decipher the layers of information encoded in the genome that specify cellular form and function. Using machine learning and other computational approaches, she investigates how sequence determines the output of the genome as it is transcribed into RNA then translated into protein. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where she leads a combined computational and experimental research group. She is a Shirl and Kay Curci Foundation Faculty Scholar and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.

Before starting her faculty position, she was supported by a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship while working in the lab of Pat Brown at Stanford, where she used the new technique of ribosome profiling to understand translation of mRNAs. She earned her PhD in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley, after undergraduate degrees in mathematics and biology from MIT.

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Gene Yeo, PhD, Professor

Department Cellular and Molecular Medicine - University of California, San Diego

Gene Yeo is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Yeo has a BSc in Chemical Engineering and a BA in Economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the UCSD Rady School of Management. Dr. Yeo’s primary research interest is in understanding the importance of RNA processing and the roles that RNA binding proteins (RBPs) play in development and disease using induced pluripotent stem cell and murine models.

Dr. Yeo has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications including invited book chapters and review articles in the areas of neurodegeneration, RNA processing, computational biology and stem cell models; and served as Editor on two books on the biology of RNA binding proteins. Gene is on the Editorial Boards of the journals RNA, Cell Reports, Cell Research and eLife, and on the Advisory Board of Review commons. Gene is also a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator (2020) and received the 2021 Elisa Izaurralde Award for Innovation in Research, Teaching and Service from the RNA Society. Gene is a co-founder of biotech companies which includes Locanabio, Eclipse Bioinnovations, Proteona, Orbital Therapeutics and Trotana Therapeutics.  Gene serves or had served on the scientific advisory boards of the Allen Institute of Immunology, Locanabio, Eclipse Bioinnovations, Proteona, Aquinnah, Cell Applications, Tecan, LGC, Nooma, Insitro and Ribometrix. Gene is a senior advisor to Accelerator Life Sciences Partners.

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