Members in the News: Joseph T. Bass, MD, PhD, Elected to the AAAS

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Endocrine Society member Joseph T. Bass, MD, PhD, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS).

Bass is the Charles F. Kettering Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill. As a world leader in circadian biology and endocrinology, his creativity and insights as an endocrinologist were instrumental in his discovery that a mutation in a core circadian clock gene lead to abnormal glucose metabolism, hyperphagia, and alterations in the control of feeding time in mice. This pioneering work provided the molecular underpinning for current thinking about how shift work leads to obesity and diabetes and set the stage for studies on how meal timing affects health.

Bass earned both his MD and PhD at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and completed fellowships in endocrinology as well as Molecular Biology. Since joining the faculty at Northwestern at the start of 2000, Bass has become one of the world’s leaders in circadian biology and endocrinology. In 2023, he received the Endocrine Society’s 2023 Roy O. Greep Outstanding Research Laureate Award. 

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence – this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.”

The Academy, chartered in 1780, was established to recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. The first members elected to the Academy include George Washington, who said – in his first annual message to Congress in 1790 – “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

Read an Endocrine News Q&A with Bass here.

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