MAXINE F. SINGER - Committee Chair

Dr. Maxine Singer, currently president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (Washington, DC), Maxine is also an eminent biochemist whose wide-ranging research on RNA and DNA has greatly advanced scientific understanding of how nucleic acids behave in viral and human genes.

Dr. Singer received her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College (1952) and her PhD from Yale University (1957). She worked at NIH as a research biochemist in the Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases until 1975, studying the synthesis and structure of RNA. In 1975, she moved to the National Cancer Institute. These investigations led to an interest in primate genomes, and ultimately to her discovery of a transposable element, or "jumping gene," in human DNA.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine, Dr. Singer has also served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and on the governing boards of Yale and the Weizmann Institute. She received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, the highest honor given to a civil servant, in "outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for societal responsibility of the scientist."