Linda Griffith, Ph.D.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has announced the election of 100 new members for 2021, including two MIT faculty members and three additional Institute affiliates.

Faculty honorees include Linda G. Griffith, a professor in the MIT departments of Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering; and Feng Zhang, a professor in the MIT departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering. Guillermo Antonio Ameer ScD ’99, a professor of biomedical engineering and surgery at Northwestern University; Darrell Gaskin SM ’87, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University; and Vamsi Mootha, an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and former student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, were also honored… Continue reading.

Professors awarded the National Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has announced that two MIT professors have been jointly awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, the most prestigious engineering education award in the United States.

Linda G. Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Department of Biological Engineering, and Douglas A. Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Biology, were recognized for their respective contributions to “the establishment of a new biology-based engineering education, producing a new generation of leaders capable of addressing world problems with innovative biological technologies,” according to an NAE statement… Continue reading.

Endometriosis, the invasive displacement of uterine tissue into surrounding organs, affects at least 10 percent of women. The disease, which is often misdiagnosed, can cause severe pain and infertility, but very little is known about how it arises.

In 2009, biological engineer Linda Griffith launched the Center for Gynepathology Research at MIT to study endometriosis and similar diseases. One of the center’s goals is to learn more about the molecular and cellular basis of endometriosis, to give scientists better drug targets and help doctors decide how to best treat individual patients.

Griffith and colleagues have now taken a step toward that goal, identifying a pattern of immune system signaling molecules that correlates with certain symptoms of endometriosis. They also identified the underlying cellular activity that produces this signature.

This signature, described in the Feb. 5 issue of Science Translational Medicine, could help scientists develop a patient stratification system similar to that used for breast cancer patients, whose treatments are tailored to the molecular profile of their tumors, says Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in MIT’s biological engineering and mechanical engineering departments, and a senior author of the paper.