Sankar Ghosh, PhD, Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Sankar Ghosh, PhD, a leading expert in understanding inflammatory disease and the human immune system, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Announced on Apr. 26, Dr. Ghosh, chair of the Department of  Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, is one of three Columbia faculty members to join the NAS, in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Dr. Ghosh, who also is a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC),  specializes in understanding the complexities of transcriptional regulation, with a particular focus on the human immune system. Best known for his work on NF-kB, which plays an important role in regulating the expression of certain genes involved in inflammation and the immune responses, Dr. Ghosh’s research has been critical in the advancement of the biological understanding of and treatment of inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis, colitis, and dermatitis. His research interests have expanded over the years to also include the study of long non-coding RNAs and microRNAs in the inflammatory process, and recent work from his lab have unveiled novel pathways by which the NF-kB pathway triggers immune responses to cancer.

“I am deeply honored to have been elected to the National Academy by my peers in the field,” says Dr. Ghosh. “This recognition is shared with the many trainees that have worked in my laboratory over the last three decades, and is also the result of the support of the institutions, colleagues, peers, and mentors who have been with me for all this time."

In 2008, Dr. Ghosh was tapped to join Columbia as department chair after spending 17 years at Yale University School of Medicine. There, he served as a professor in the Departments of Immunobiology and of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Before joining Yale, Dr. Ghosh worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel laureate David Baltimore, PhD, at the Whitehead Institute of MIT.

The NAS has elected 120 new members and 30 new international members. At Columbia, Elena Aprile in the Department of Physics and Robert Jervis in the Department of Political Science have also been elected to the 2021 class of new members.