Two NUCATS Members Elected to AAAS

Two Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.

Elizabeth M McNally, MD, PhD and Thomas McDade, PhD, are among this year’s class of more than 250 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit and private sectors.

A Pioneer in Gene Editing

McNally is the Elizabeth J. Ward Professor of Genetic Medicine, director of the Center for Genetic Medicine, and a professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology.

McNally’s contributions to genome analysis techniques such as quantitative trait mapping have bettered understanding of rare genetic variation, allowing identification of genes that modify the outcomes of genetic diseases. She is focused on improving bench-to-bedside transition of genetic discoveries. In particular, her search for the genetic modifiers of myopathies has resulted in the detection of several new protective pathways. This work has been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Science Translational Medicine, among others.

Academic Focus

We study genetic mechanisms responsible for inherited human diseases including heart failure, cardiomyopathy, muscular dystrophy, arrhythmias, aortic aneurysms. Working with individuals and families, we are defining the genetic mutations that cause these disorders. By establishing models for these disorders, we can now begin to develop and test new therapies, including genetic correction and gene editing.

McNally earned her medical degree and PhD in microbiology and immunology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and fellowships in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in Genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital. Afterward, she joined the University of Chicago, where she was a faculty member from 1996 to 2014.

She has been recognized with an Established Investigator Award by the American Heart Association, the Burroughs Wellcome Translational Scientist Award, the American Heart Association Basic Research Prize and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award. She is also a member of the National Academy of Inventors.

Exploring Connections Between Biology and Society

McDade is a professor of Anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and in Feinberg’s Department of Medical Social Sciences.

McDade is a biological anthropologist who specializes in human population biology. His work is primarily concerned with the dynamic interrelationships among society, biology and health over the life course, with an emphasis on life course approaches to stress and the human immune system.

Academic Focus

My work is primarily concerned with the dynamic interrelationships among society, biology, and health over the life course, with an emphasis on life course approaches to stress and the human immune system. The development and application of minimally-invasive methods for integrating physiological measures into population-based research is also a major area of interest.

McDade’s work has been published in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, New England Journal of Medicine, and he helps lead, along with McNally and others, Northwestern’s COVID-19 antibody testing efforts. That project, called SCAN: Screening for Coronavirus Antibodies in Neighborhoods, aims to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and to identify the circumstances and behaviors associated with exposure and severity of infection.

Read more Northwestern’s six new inductees.