The Genetics Society of America is pleased to announce the 2026 recipients of its GSA Awards, honoring distinguished service and achievement in the field of genetics. Nominated by their peers and selected by the GSA Board of Directors, this year’s awardees will be recognized with dedicated profiles to be published on this blog in the coming months. 

Additionally, a series of virtual awards seminars will spotlight the awardees’ careers and contributions. The 2026 recipients are recognized for a wide range of impactful achievements, including scientific discovery, mentorship, the creation of community resources, and education.

The 2026 award recipients are:

Elizabeth W. Jones Award
for excellence in education

Brian Donovan

Brian Donovan is being recognized for his extensive educational efforts in the field of genetics including the development of curriculums based on humane genomics education (HGE) to teach students about human population genetics while challenging inaccurate biological assumptions that gender and racial inequality are genetically determined, and emphasizing augmentation, model-based, and quantitative reasoning. This award also celebrates his engagement with diverse communities in science education and his work to identify the impacts of genetics instruction on the inclusion of students from marginalized backgrounds in genetics classrooms. Donovan’s efforts document how the genetics curriculum describes and explains human differences.

Genetics Society of America Early Career Medal
for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics

Moisés Expósito-Alonso
University of California, Berkeley

Moisés Expósito-Alonso is being recognized for pioneering research on evolutionary adaptation, spanning the genomic architecture of adaptation across climates, rapid evolution in near-natural long-term experiments, and the loss of genetic diversity across species. The award also celebrates Moisés’s leadership of an international outdoor Arabidopsis experimental evolution project GrENE-net.org, and his commitment to mentorship of students at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as his science communication work in international biological conservation forums.

Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal
for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics

Judith Kimble
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Judith Kimble is being honored for a lifetime of pioneering scientific contributions that shaped our understanding of stem cell regulation in animals and for her visionary service which has significantly influenced research policy, training, and equity in science. This award celebrates scientific discovery including the first stem cell niche and its regulation of germline stem cells, the molecular mechanism of Notch signaling, PUF RNA binding proteins as conserved RNA regulators, PUF protein partnerships that pattern self-renewal and differentiation, a mechanism specifying sperm/oocyte cell fate, and SYS-1/β-catenin, as well as contributions to Wnt signaling more broadly. She is also recognized for her service to the genetics community as past GSA president and in leadership roles at other scientific societies; her commitment to sustained research funding and basic science, exemplified in her work influencing policy decisions during the Obama administration, is admirable. Kimble’s mentorship of students, postdocs, and junior and mid-career colleagues at her institution and around the world, and her support of independent and creative thinking are also worthy of much celebration.

George W. Beadle Award
for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers

Aaron Mitchell
University of Georgia

Aaron Mitchell is being recognized for his vast scientific contributions working on budding yeast and pathogenic fungi to elucidate genetic networks controlling meiosis and pH sensing, including developing genetic approaches that have transformed the field through their application to explain pH sensing, biofilm formation, and pathogenesis. This award also celebrates Mitchell’s commitment to diversifying the academic environment through his support of women and students from underrepresented backgrounds, particularly through his co-founding and leadership of the MBL Molecular Mycology Course (MOMY), which has revolutionized the study of fungi that cause infections in humans using yeast genetics. 

Edward Novitski Prize
for extraordinary creativity and intellectual ingenuity in genetics research

Michael O’Connor
University of Minnesota 

Michael O’Connor is being recognized for his early work in developing molecular genetic tools for artificial chromosome engineering, and his pioneering work on elucidating the molecular mechanisms and developmental roles of TGFb and ecdysone signaling pathways in Drosophila development. Early in his career, he created a method to build large fragments of DNA in low copy number vectors and manipulate sequences within these large inserts by homologous recombination. This was the first example of a BAC (Bacterial Artificial Chromosome) and a procedure to manipulate BAC content (recombineering). Subsequently, he used genetic, molecular, and computational tools to illustrate how a BMP gradient is formed in the embryonic extracellular space to specify cell fates within the dorsal half of the embryo. Subsequent work focused on understanding the developmental roles of Activin signaling demonstrated that this branch of the TGF beta family controls body size, tissue scaling, and physiologic homeostasis. This award also celebrates his work identifying the P450 enzymes encoded by the “Halloween” genes and ordering them into a biosynthetic pathway that synthesizes the steroid hormone ecdysone from dietary cholesterol. Additional studies to understand how ecdysone peaks are generated lead to the discovery of Drosophila PTTH and the elucidation of the PTTH signal transduction pathway as well as identification of a novel role for PTTH in promoting larval light avoidance, thereby optimizing conditions for adult development. Lastly, he used a genome wide RNAi screen to discover a novel steroid transport system. This was a paradigm shifting finding that overturned the textbook view that steroid hormones simply diffuse through membranes to enter and exit cells. 

Genetics Society of America Medal
for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics

Joseph Schacherer
University of Strasbourg

Joseph Schacherer is being recognized for his impactful contributions to the field through the study of population genomics in the model Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other less well-studied species, the genetic basis and architecture of complex traits, and mitochondrial genome evolution in yeast. This award also celebrates Schacherer’s work leading the 1000 Yeast Genomes Project, which has provided a reference framework for studying genetic diversity and domestication, and efforts to train and support a diverse group of early career scientists.

Genetics Society of America Mentorship Award
for excellence in contributions to the mentorship of geneticists

Irini Topalidou
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Irini Topalidou is being recognized for her mentorship of more than 30 trainees who have gone on to start graduate school, medical school, postdoc fellowships, faculty positions, and biotech careers. The award also celebrates her published work on mentorship, STEM education, and career choice in publications like Science and Nature, as well as her commitment to highlighting the challenges faced by trainees and improving mentorship practices and career guidance.

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