Professor Dorothee Kern is named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Professor of Biochemistry Dorothee Kern has been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which honors exceptionally accomplished individuals across a variety of disciplines.

Acknowledged for her accomplishments in the biological sciences, Kern is among 269 new members drawn from academia, the arts, industry, policy, research, and science. Joining Kern are luminaries including conductor and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel, songwriter, actor, director and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda, author Zadie Smith, author and financial journalist Michael Lewis, and producer Shonda Rhimes.

“With the election of these members, the Academy is honoring excellence, innovation, and leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments. We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good,” said Academy President David W. Oxtoby.

Kern’s research group studies the dynamic nature of proteins with the goal of revealing the interplay between structure, dynamics and function. She has been a major contributor in the experimental characterization of protein dynamics during enzyme catalysis and signaling. Her group is exploring the evolution of complex biological function by combining a variety of biophysical methods such as NMR, x-ray, fast kinetics, fluorescence, molecular dynamics simulation and ancestral reconstruction. Dorothee pursues a new vision of putting protein dynamics and allosteric networks at the heart of improved drug design, is founder of Relay Therapeutics and MOMA Therapeutics with the mission of exploiting protein dynamics for expanding therapeutics.

Kern is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and is the recipient of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, the Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society, the Young Investigator Award of the International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics and the Strage Award for Aspiring Young Science Faculty. She was awarded the National Lecturer of the Biophysical Society and is an elected member of National Academy of Science of Germany Leopoldina. Before her professional scientific career, she was captain of the German National Basketball team for many years and won the MVP award of the German National league.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences began its mission of honoring excellence more than 240 years ago. In 1780, the Academy’s founders – including John Adams and John Hancock – envisioned an organization that would recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young nation. The first members elected to the Academy in 1781 included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

Today, the Academy continues to be both an honorary society, electing new members from the non-profit, private, and public sectors, and an independent policy organization with initiatives in the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science.