Two faculty in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have been awarded the distinction of 2013 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

They are:

Paul McCray, Jr., professor and Vice-Chair of Research in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics, and professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Internal Medicine, "for distinguished research, teaching, and service contributions to the field of pulmonary biology and gene therapy."

McCray received a medical degree from the UI in 1981. His research focuses on the disease processes and treatment of cystic fibrosis, and the development and application of gene transfer technologies for treating human disease. His lab also investigates the innate immune defense systems that allow our lungs to clear inhaled pathogens, including bacteria and viruses.
David Price

David Price, professor in the Department of Biochemistry, "for distinguished contributions to the field of eukaryotic transcription, particularly for founding discoveries in RNA polymerase II elongation control and regulation of HIV gene expression."

Price, who received his doctorate in biochemistry in 1980 from Florida State University and then carried out postdoctoral work at Caltech and Duke, joined the UI faculty in 1989. His lab investigates the basic mechanisms that regulate the elongation phase of transcription by RNA polymerase II, with a particular focus on understanding how elongation is controlled by the positive transcription elongation factor, P-TEFb. Price and his team use human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as a model system for their research with a long-term goal of developing new anti-HIV therapies.

The UI recipients are among 338 individuals elected this year by peers. AAAS members are elevated to the rank of "fellow" because their efforts to advance science or its applications are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. The new fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a rosette pin on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014, during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The nonprofit AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Its journal, Science, has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. For the latest research news, log onto the AAAS Website EurekAlert!.