Annual Marion J. Siegman Lectureship Award

The annual Marion J. Siegman Lectureship Award recognizes an established investigator (Early Career or Established Professional) who has made outstanding contributions to our understanding of muscle contraction and motility and has opened the way for new avenues of investigation in the field.  

Nominations are open to anyone conducting research in these fields; membership in APS is not required. Anyone, except members of the selection committee, may be nominated for the award in a given year.

The awardee is invited to present a 45-minute lecture on her/his research at American Physiology Summit. The Awardee is also expected to publish a research/review article on her/his formal lecture in an appropriate APS journal. The awardee will be selected by an award selection committee. You must be nominated for this award. The awardee must attend the American Physiology Summit. 

The award recipient will be selected by the 2024 selection committee: 

• Joseph Brozinick, Eli Lilly 
  
• Clara Franzini-Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania 
• Samantha Harris (Chair), University of Arizona
• Thomas Hawke, McMaster University 
• Richard L. Moss, University of Wisconsin
• Marion Siegman, Jefferson Medical College
• Avril Somlyo, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center 
• David Warshaw, University of Vermont

Why apply for this award?

It became painfully clear to me (Marion J. Siegman, October 2021) a half-century ago when I submitted my first grant application to the NIH for the study of the Mechanical Properties of Smooth Muscle that in our research on muscle we seem to operate in silos.  The Background section of that proposal was devoted to what was then known about smooth muscle, which was little compared to the striated types.  Much of the literature focused on vascular smooth muscle compared to a handful of papers on visceral muscles.  I diligently summarized all that was relevant to mechanics (thinking that I had done a pretty good job at it) and elaborated on gaps that needed to be filled in the proposed studies.  When the review (“Pink sheets”) arrived some months later, I was horrified to read that the grant was not funded, mainly because I failed to include a review of cardiac and skeletal muscle as well. 

I dutifully spent months reading all the papers I could find without the benefit of electronic search resources. I then realized that the prevailing model was skeletal muscle, with cardiac mechanics studies just evolving.  The resubmitted grant proposal included a tome on the mechanical properties of all muscle types, and, happily, was funded. Lesson learned!

Applicants will be asked the following questions:

• Nomination Letter
• Nominee's NIH biosketch or full cv
• Key Publications with Description (Max 10 Publications)

Login to the American Physiological Society's Award site for more details on these questions and to apply.