Peter Dedon, an MIT professor of biological engineering, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The 2022 class of AAAS Fellows includes 506 scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.
Dedon is the Singapore Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, a lead principal investigator of the Antimicrobial Resistance Interdisciplinary Research Group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), a member of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences, and a member of the HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine.
His research program applies chemical approaches to understanding nucleic acid biology in human disease. His research groups at MIT and in Singapore are leveraging discoveries in the areas of epigenetics, epitranscriptomics, and genetic toxicology to develop new enzymatic tools for biotechnology, new methods for industrial microbiology and protein production, and novel therapeutics in screening- and structure-based drug discovery programs. Dedon and his former students and postdocs have translated their science and technologies in several startup companies.
Dedon earned a BA in chemistry from St. Olaf College in 1979 and an MD and PhD in pharmacology from the University of Rochester in 1987. He pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Rochester and Harvard Medical School, and joined the MIT faculty in 1991. Dedon helped create the Department of Biological Engineering in 1998.