Samara Reck-Peterson Elected Fellow of American Society For Cell Biology

July 3, 2024

By Mario Aguilera

Recognizing her groundbreaking research in deciphering the mechanisms of intracellular transport in health and disease, School of Biological Sciences Professor Samara Reck-Peterson was named a fellow of the American Society For Cell Biology (ASCB).

Professor Samara Reck-Peterson

Reck-Peterson, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (School of Medicine) and Department of Cell and Developmental Biology (School of Biological Sciences) and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, studies the cell’s microtubule cytoskeleton and related transport machinery, biological systems that have been found as mutated in many neurological diseases. The highly interdisciplinary research conducted in the Reck-Peterson lab leverages several leading technologies and methods, including in-vitro biochemical reconstitution, protein engineering, single-molecule imaging, proteomics, genomics, live-cell imaging and genetics.

Reck-Peterson was introduced as an ASCB Fellow at the most recent Cell Bio conference, a joint meeting of ASCB and the European Molecular Biology Organization in Boston. She is one in a cohort of 19 ASCB Fellows chosen through a nomination process by their ASCB peers. A list of Fellow nominees are then reviewed and approved by the ASCB Council, a governing body made up of international cell biologists.

Reck-Peterson received a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College and a Ph.D. from Yale University. She was a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Francisco, followed by a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School. She joined UC San Diego in 2015. She has received an NIH New Innovator Award, a Rita Allen and Milton Cassel Scholar award and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Simons Faculty Scholar Award. She became an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2018.

The ASCB’s stated mission is to lead a diverse, global and multidisciplinary scientific community focused on the cell, the basic unit of all life. With 9,000 members, including one quarter based outside the U.S., the ASCB draws more than 5,000 to its annual meeting. Thirty-two past or current ASCB members have won Nobel Prizes in medicine or chemistry.

Visit the ASCB Fellows page to see the full list of honorees.