Scott Emmons, Ph.D., who completed the first complete wiring diagram of an animal’s entire nervous system, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Dr. Emmons is distinguished professor emeritus of genetics and in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The NAS, a private, nonprofit society established in 1863 by an Act of Congress, announced its election of 120 new members and 24 international members “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Those elected today bring the total number of active members to 2,617.

Starting with his research on a bacterial virus as a graduate student, Dr. Emmons has spent his career investigating how genes specify phenotype, or observable characteristics. He began addressing this problem as a postdoctoral fellow, using the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as his animal model. At Einstein, he discovered that C. elegans possessed transposons (so-called jumping genes that move from one location on the genome to another) and then moved on to study the neural circuits in C. elegans. Over the course of nearly two decades, he painstakingly determined the worm’s entire connectome: the complete “wiring diagram” of all the worm’s neurons and how they are connected to each other.

His extraordinary achievement in mapping the C. elegans’ connectome is a testament to both his scientific vision and diligence. As a longtime member of the Einstein community, we are happy to celebrate this distinctive honor.

Dean Yaron Tomer, M.D.

Dr. Emmons described the C. elegans connectome in two groundbreaking papers: in Science in 2012, and in Nature in 2019. The Nature study was featured on the journal’s cover, and the Science paper won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize for the most outstanding article in Science for the year it appeared. C. elegans remains the only animal species for which the complete nervous system wiring diagram is known.

“We all heartily applaud Dr. Emmons’ well-earned election into the National Academy,” said Yaron Tomer, M.D., the Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean at Einstein and chief academic officer at Montefiore Einstein. “His extraordinary achievement in mapping the C. elegans’ connectome is a testament to both his scientific vision and diligence. As a longtime member of the Einstein community, we are happy to celebrate this distinctive honor.”

Dr. Emmons is the 15th current or former Einstein faculty member elected to the academy, joining Ana Maria Cuervo (2019), Robert Singer (2013), William Jacobs, Jr. (2013), Vern Schramm (2007), Susan Horwitz (2005), Stanley Nathenson (1988), Dominick Purpura (1983), Frank Lilly (1983), Matthew Scharff (1982), Michael V.L. Bennett (1981), Salome Waelsch (1979), Alex Novikoff (1974), Berta Scharrer (1967), and Harry Eagle (1963).