UM Professor, Alumnus Win National Medals of Science

University of Maryland Distinguished Professor Rita R. Colwell has been named one of seven recipients of the 2006 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for science.

Both will receive their medals from President Bush in White House ceremonies on July 27.

According to a White House press release, "The National Medal of Science honors individuals for pioneering scientific research in a range of fields, including physical, biological, mathematical, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences, that enhances our understanding of the world and leads to innovations and technologies that give the United States its global economic edge."

The National Science Foundation administers the award, which was established by Congress in 1959.

"I am honored to be the recipient of the National Medal of Science from the President," said Colwell. "It is an affirmation of my work on the interaction of environment, infectious disease agents and human health."

Colwell served as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1998 to 2004. She was the NSF's first woman director and the first with a life sciences background. While at NSF, Colwell emphasized interdisciplinary study among scientists.

According to a story in Nature, as NSF director Colwell "championed international collaboration and cyber infrastructure, doubled the math budget, established infotechnology, and social and psychological science programs, and placed renewed emphasis on science education, where the US had been slipping for decades."

Founder of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Colwell has been studying cholera for more than 40 years, combining high tech instruments with molecular biology to make inroads in detecting outbreaks. "We're using satellites to correlate sea height and sea temperature in order to predict cholera epidemics," she said. "It's proven to be uncannily effective because outbreaks are associated with plankton blooms."

Colwell told Nature that she is "proudest of perhaps her simplest idea: using folded sari cloth to filter from drinking water plankton with which the cholera bacterium is associated." The method was shown to reduce the incidence of the disease 48% across 65 villages in Bangladesh . "That's the work that I feel best about, because it saves lives," Colwell said.

Other recipients of the 2006 National Medal of Science are: Hyman Bass, University of Michigan ; Marvin H. Caruthers, University of Colorado ; Peter B. Dervan, California Institute of Technology; Nina V. Fedoroff, Pennsylvania State University ; Daniel Kleppner and Robert S. Langer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Lubert Stryer, Stanford University .

For more information about the National Medal of Science visit http://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/medal.jsp .