Three researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) class of 2023 fellows, a nomination considered one of the highest distinctions in the global science community.

Takanari Inoue directs the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Program. His lab has developed a kind of actuator, converting energy to motion at the molecular level, with the high temporal and spatial precision to move and probe actions in live cells (such as chemotaxis, phagocytosis and degranulation) as well as the function of cilia, microtubules and stress granules. Inoue also leads the Center for Cell Dynamics within the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Akira Sawa is director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center. Based on Sawa’s training in both clinical psychiatry and basic molecular neuroscience, he leads multidisciplinary translational projects to address mechanistic questions for major mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, mood disorders and Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular emphasis on early detection and early intervention of these conditions.

Trained as an infectious disease specialist, Cynthia Sears is a professor of medicine and oncology at the school of medicine and a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She discovered a central immune mechanism by which enteric bacteria and the microbiome promote colon carcinogenesis and modulate cancer immunotherapy responses. This mechanism has proven important in multiple examples of inflammation-induced carcinogenesis and thus provides opportunities to contribute to cancer immuno-prevention and interception spanning many tumor types.

Read more: JHMFellows