notable awards, including the 2004 National Medal of Science, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1981, and the 1988 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Thomas R. Cech. Sharp is an elected member of several academic societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2011. In 2012, he was elected the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a Member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Fidelity Biosciences Group; a member of the Board of Advisors of Polaris Venture Partners; chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and member of the Board of Directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals; advisor and investor at Longwood and Polaris Venture Funds; a member of the Boards of Directors at Syros Pharmaceuticals and VIR Biotechnology; and member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Dewpoint Biotechnology. Pendleton County, Kentucky, Sharp's birthplace, named its current middle school after him. Other activities In October 2010 Sharp participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch. Sharp is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2011, he was listed at #5 on the MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas from MIT. He is an editorial advisor to Xconomy, and is a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He has also served on the Faculty Advisory Board of the MIT-Harvard Research Journal and MIT Student Research Association. Selected publications See also History of RNA biology List of RNA biologists MIT Department of Biology References External links 1944 births Living people American geneticists American Nobel laureates California Institute of Technology faculty Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty National Medal of Science laureates Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine People from Pendleton County, Kentucky University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Scripps Research Union College (Kentucky) alumni