Member News

Emr receives lifetime achievement award for ESCRT work

ASBMB Today Staff
Aug. 29, 2022

Scott Emr, a professor at Cornell University, got a lifetime achievement award in May during the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s meeting on ESCRT biology in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Endosomal sorting complexes required for transport, or ESCRTs, are sets of proteins that enable vesicles to bud out from, rather than into, the cytoplasm. They are required for formation of vesicles within endosomes, some types of viral envelope budding and release, and the final steps of cell division. 

Anjon Audhya and Scott Emr celebrate
Courtesy of Juan Martin Serrano
Scott Emr received a framed copy of his first ESCRT paper, which was signed by members of the lab, at the ASBMB's ESCRT biology meeting in May at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Meeting co-organizer Anjon Audhya, left, presented Emr's lifetime achievement award. 

"Scott is generally acknowledged as the 'father' of our field, having discovered many of the ESCRT factors in yeast and defining their subcomplexes and different functions," meeting co-organizer Wes Sundquist of the University of Utah told ASBMB Today. Over the years, Emr's lab has identified more than a dozen ESCRT proteins in yeast and illuminated their roles in decoding lipid phosphorylation patterns, sorting cargo and bending membranes into new shapes. 

Emr has been carrying out his research for four decades as a professor at the Caltech, the University of California, San Diego, and most recently Cornell’s Weill Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology, where he served as director. 

He won last year's Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine and the ASBMB's Avanti Award in Lipids in 2007 and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology. 

He’s been a member of the ASBMB since 1991.

Megan Reder/ASBMB
The ESCRT biology meeting was held May 17–20 in Madison, Wisconsin. Read our interview with co-organizer Wes Sundquist.

Enjoy reading ASBMB Today?

Become a member to receive the print edition four times a year and the digital edition monthly.

Learn more
ASBMB Today Staff

This article was written by a member or members of the ASBMB Today staff.

Get the latest from ASBMB Today

Enter your email address, and we’ll send you a weekly email with recent articles, interviews and more.

Latest in People

People highlights or most popular articles

Hope for a cure hangs on research
Essay

Hope for a cure hangs on research

July 17, 2025

Amid drastic proposed cuts to biomedical research, rare disease families like Hailey Adkisson’s fight for survival and hope. Without funding, science can’t “catch up” to help the patients who need it most.

Before we’ve lost what we can’t rebuild: Hope for prion disease
Feature

Before we’ve lost what we can’t rebuild: Hope for prion disease

July 15, 2025

Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel, a husband-and-wife team racing to cure prion disease, helped develop ION717, an antisense oligonucleotide treatment now in clinical trials. Their mission is personal — and just getting started.

ASBMB members recognized as Allen investigators
Member News

ASBMB members recognized as Allen investigators

July 14, 2025

Ileana Cristea, Sarah Cohen, Itay Budin and Christopher Obara are among 14 researchers selected as Allen Distinguished Investigators by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

AI can be an asset, ASBMB educators say
Advice

AI can be an asset, ASBMB educators say

July 9, 2025

Pedagogy experts share how they use artificial intelligence to save time, increase accessibility and prepare students for a changing world.

ASBMB undergraduate education programs foster tomorrow’s scientific minds
Feature

ASBMB undergraduate education programs foster tomorrow’s scientific minds

July 8, 2025

Learn how the society empowers educators and the next generation of scientists through community as well as accreditation and professional development programs that support evidence-based teaching and inclusive pedagogy.

Honors for Gagna and Sundquist
Member News

Honors for Gagna and Sundquist

July 7, 2025

Claude Gagna is being honored for the diagnostic tool he developed that uses AI to streamline diagnostics. Wesley Sundquist is being honored for his role in finding that HIV’s capsid was a target for treatment.