Biology Professor George Langford has been selected to receive the first-ever Ernest Everett Just Lectureship Award from the American Society of Cell Biology.
The award, named after Ernest Everett Just '07, provides Langford the opportunity to lecture at the ASCB's annual meeting Dec. 11 to 14 in San Francisco, Calif.
Just was an African American cell biologist who did work in the earlier part of the century at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., one of the world's most renowned cell biology institutes. Langford recently worked at the same laboratory.
The lectureship award, which includes an honorarium, is designed to highlight the accomplishments of minority cell biologists. Langford received the award for his pioneering work published in a 1992 study detailing how particles move inside of cells.
"It's a great honor to receive the award. It also is a very important award seeing that it recognizes Afro-American scientists for their contributions to cell biology. It will give visibility to Afro-Americans and other scientists of color," Langford said.
Langford said his study of nerve cells in squids -- specifically the transport of cell material -- could have implications for nerve regeneration in humans.
This process of transport is required for the regrowth of nerve tissue, which can be damaged in trauma-related injuries, Langford said.
"So if we had a way to figure out how this process works, perhaps we could speed up the regrowth of nerves. Thereby we could reduce the amount of degeneration that occurs in muscle tissue during the re-intervation," Langford said.
Langford began the project in 1991 and has worked on similar projects for almost 20 years.
Aside from research, Langford has been instrumental in establishing and continuing the E. E. Just Program for minority students in the sciences.
"The E. E. Just Program is going extremely well. I am very pleased with how well the program has been received by both faculty and students. We have a lot of students now who are applying for the internships and we just got new funds from the Howard Hughes Foundation," Langford said.
With disproportionately fewer black students majoring in the sciences, Langford said he hopes the E.E. Just Program will continue to attract minority students into the field.
"The E. E. Just Program likes to encourage professors to involve the student in an original research project so that students actually get to do experiments, collect data and perform data analysis. Also, participants are required to write up a report at the end of the internship," Langford said.
Biology Professor Robert McClung said faculty members in the biology department are very happy for Langford.
"Anything that can raise the profile to show that a minority is capable of [outstanding research] is good. Professor Langford will serve as a role model to bring more minorities into research and science itself is the beneficiary," McClung said.
Langford joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1991. He has also taught at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Howard University in Washington D.C. and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He headed the National Science Foundation's cell biology program from 1988 to 1989 and is a member of ASCB's executive committee.
Langford said he will continue to carry out his research and is currently in the process of transcribing results from work that he and others collected this past summer.
"We hope that the lectureship will give us a boost in terms of both visibility for the project and also the kinds of feedback that one always likes to get from colleagues and friends on how to guide one's own research," Langford said.
