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NYU School of Medicine Scientist is Elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences

APRIL 25, 2006 - Richard P. Novick, Professor of Microbiology and Medicine at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, has been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Election to the NAS is widely considered one of the highest accolades that can be accorded to a scientist. Established in 1863 during the Lincoln administration, the NAS advises the federal government about science and technology. 

Dr. Novick, a leader in the field of molecular pathogenesis, has devoted his career to studying Staphylococcus aureus, a notorious bacterium that causes a wide variety of illnesses, from relatively minor skin abscesses to life-threatening toxic shock syndrome, and is the leading cause of hospital-acquired infections.  Antibiotics kill the pathogen, but in recent years it has increasingly become resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics.

Dr. Novick's laboratory spent many years working out the molecular genetics of antibiotic resistance. More recently the laboratory has become dedicated to understanding the molecular mechanisms by which the bacterium causes disease, and to devising ways to block its effects. His laboratory discovered and characterized a master gene, or global regulator, which controls a signaling pathway in the bacterium that is responsible for the production and release of its toxins and other disease-causing products.

Dr. Novick received his M.D. degree with Honors in Microbiology from NYU School of Medicine in 1959 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, England in 1961 and 1962. He did his residency training at Vanderbilt University Hospital (1962-63) and was a special postdoctoral fellow at New York's Rockefeller University from 1963 to 1965. He was Director of The Public Health Research Institute in New York from 1982-92 and an adjunct professor at NYU Medical School for many years. He became a member of the NYU School of Medicine faculty in 1993.

There are now five members of the NYU School of Medicine faculty who are members of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to Dr. Novick, the members are: Ruth Lehmann, Ph.D., the Julius Raynes Professor of Developmental Genetics at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Dan R. Littman, M.D., Ph.D., the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Professor of Molecular Immunology; Rodolfo Llinas, M.D., Ph.D., the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience; and David D. Sabatini, M.D., Ph.D., the Frederick L. Ehrman Professor of Cell Biology and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology.

Nationwide there are 2,013 members of the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy also has 371 foreign associates, who are nonvoting members.

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