SABA VALADKHAN
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Doctor Saba Valadkhan joined Case faculty as an assistant professor in the Center for RNA Molecular Biology in the School of Medicine. She spent her childhood in Iran and attended medical school there. When she was 23, Valadkhan came to the United States to start her graduate study at Columbia University in New York.
Recently, Valadkhan
was named as the recipient of 2004's Science/American Association of Science Young Scientist Grand Prize for her work with the spliceosome.
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Although she is thrilled and flattered by the award,
she is very much looking forward to the challenges of being an independent scientist and a principal investigator. She is one of the three women who have received this distinction over the past decade.
Valadkhan expresses concern about the widespread underestimation of women in academia and passionately insists that women are primary citizens and not just mothers and wives. Valadkhan is a key example of a woman capable of asserting herself and making significant progress in her scientific field.
Right now, Valadkhan's research team includes three senior members and three undergraduate students. She feels that research on the spliceosome is important because roughly fifty percent of all genetic diseases plus many cancers and neurodegenerative diseases such a certain types of Alzheimers
are caused by splicing errors. Valadkhan would like to continue to focus on the spliceosome for the time being, but she would also like to eventually expand her work to other aspects of biological research.
To learn more about Dr. Saba Valadkhan's RNA and spliceosome research, please visit her website here. To read AAAS's extended interview with Valadkhan, click here (site will appear in a new window).
Article and interview by Casey Hicks.
