2023 The RNA Society Award for Excellence in Inclusive Leadership Winner
Posted on JMarch 9, 2022

The RNA Society Award for Excellence in Inclusive Leadership recognizes outstanding leadership that promotes the training and/or professional development of underrepresented scientists and greater inclusion of RNA researchers within our scientific community. The 2023 award goes to Dr. Wendy Gilbert, an Associate Professor at Yale University, where she studies how sequence and post-transcriptional RNA modifications modulate mRNA translation and stability. Her activism for diversity, equity, and inclusion is driven by the conviction that academic institutions, and scientists in particular, have a responsibility to model a just society in which people of all identities are supported to reach their full potential. Dr. Gilbert has advocated for fair representation of underrepresented groups in a number of different settings, including in graduate student admissions, where she helped design a scoring system for applicants that minimizes inherent bias. Similarly, she helped implement a system for faculty candidate evaluation devoid of names, advisors’ names, journal names, and gendered pronouns. She has presented on these topics locally, nationally and internationally, and is recognized widely for her passion and expertise in this area. Dr. Gilbert has been a member of the RNA Society since 2010.