By the decision of the General Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia on June 9, the prominent U.S.-Armenian scientist, Nobel Prize laureate, molecular biologist-neurobiologist, Professor Ardem Patapoutian was elected an honorary member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the Republic of Armenia.
In 2021 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of receptors that allow humans to feel temperature and touch.
Ardem Patapoutian is a molecular biologist specializing in sensory transduction. His notable contributions to science include identifying novel ion channels activated by temperature, mechanical force, and increased cell volume. His laboratory has shown that these ion channels play crucial roles in sensing temperature, touch, proprioception, and pain. Patapoutian was born in Lebanon in 1967 and attended the American University of Beirut for one year before he immigrated to The United States in 1986. He graduated from UCLA in 1990 and received his PhD at Caltech in the lab of Dr. Barbara Wold in 1996. After postdoctoral work with Dr. Lou Reichardt at UCSF, he joined the faculty of The Scripps Research Institute in 2000, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. He also held a position at the Genomics Institute of The Novartis Research Foundation from 2000-2014. Patapoutian was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience in 2006 and was named an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2014. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017).
