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Source: Jennifer O'Brien
415-476-2557
14 December 1998
UCSF CHANCELLOR J. MICHAEL BISHOP AWARDED AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY PUBLIC SERVICE AWARD, PRESENTED BY MAYOR BROWN
J. Michael Bishop, MD, Chancellor of UC San Francisco, was awarded The American Society for Cell Biology Public Service Award on Sunday, December 13, at the society’s annual meeting in San Francisco. The award was presented by Mayor Willie Brown.
A key voice on national policy issues related to science education and scientific research, Bishop was cited by the American Society for Cell Biology for his service to the Society, of which he is a former president, to the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy (JSC), and for his contributions on the national level. The JSC is a coalition of four basic biomedical research societies representing more than 20,000 researchers in the fields of genetics, cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and biophysics. The JSC was formed in 1990 to bring scientists together to advocate for federal funding for basic biomedical research.
Bishop is the fifth recipient of the ASCB award. The previous recipients are Representative George Gekas (R-PA), in 1997; Marc Kirschner, PhD, the Carl W. Walter Professor of Cell Biology and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, in 1996; Representative John Porter (R-IL), in 1995; and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), in 1994.
Bishop was named chancellor of UCSF July 1, 1998. He received the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, along with Harold Varmus, MD, a professor of Microbiology and Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF and currently the director of the National Institutes of Health, for their discovery that normal cells contain genes that can cause cancer if they malfunction. Their discovery is widely credited with sparking a revolution in cancer research.
Bishop was appointed chairman of the National Cancer Advisory Board by President Clinton in February 1998. He is Scientific Advisor to the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus and has testified before Congress.
At UCSF, Bishop has been a distinguished and popular teacher and adviser and continues to teach as Chancellor. He has twice received the campus' Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 1994 was appointed a university professor, the highest honor The University of California can bestow on a professor in recognition of superior scholarship and teaching.
As chancellor, Bishop presides over an academic enterprise composed of the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, as well as a graduate division; the UCSF Medical Center, a part of the newly formed UCSF Stanford Health Care; and affiliated programs at San Francisco General Hospital and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. One of San Francisco's largest employers, UCSF has 3,700 students, residents, interns and other health professionals in training, a 13,000-member faculty and staff, and an annual budget of $850 million. An additional 4,200 UCSF Stanford Health Care employees work at the UCSF site.
Bishop's many honors and awards include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Armand Hammer Cancer Prize and the Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences from the American Association of Medical Colleges. He is a member of several professional and honorary societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Medicine, and the co-author of three books and nearly 400 scientific papers, publications and reviews.
Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, Bishop received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in 1957 from Gettysburg College. He earned his M.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard in 1962 and went on to serve in a number of research, teaching and clinical appointments.
He joined UCSF in 1968 as an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology. Soon after he became an associate professor and professor, and in 1982 was appointed a professor of biochemistry and biophysics. In addition, since 1990, he has been a non-resident fellow of The Salk Institute. ###
