At its annual meeting on October 20, the National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members, including MIT faculty members Dina Catabi and Facundo Batista, as well as three MIT alumni.
Election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and a commitment to service.
Facundo Batista is the Associate Director and Scientific Director of the Ragon Institute at MGH, MIT, and Harvard University, and the inaugural Philip T. Ragon and Susan M. Ragon Professor in the MIT Department of Biology. The National Academy of Medicine honored Batista “for his work elucidating the biology of antibody-producing B cells to better understand how our body’s immune system responds to infections.” More recently, Facundo’s research has advanced the development of preclinical vaccines and treatments for globally important diseases such as HIV, malaria, and influenza.
Batista holds a PhD from the International School of Advanced Studies and was a member of the Francis Crick Institute (formerly the London Institute), which he founded in 2002, as well as a professorship at Imperial College London. He joined the Ragon Institute in 2016 to pursue new research programs applying his expertise in B cell and antibody responses to vaccine development and preclinical vaccinology for diseases such as SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. Batista is an elected fellow or member of the British Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Society of Microbiology, the Latin American Academy of Sciences, and the European Molecular Biology Organization, and serves as editor-in-chief of a journal. EMBO Journal.
Dina Katabi SM ’99, PhD ’03 is the Thuan (1990) and Nicole Pham Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Her research spans digital health, wireless sensing, mobile computing, machine learning, and computer vision. Katabi’s contributions include efficient communication protocols for the Internet, advanced non-contact biosensors, and new AI models to interpret physiological signals. NAM recognized Mr. Katavi for his “pioneering digital health technology that enables non-invasive, external, remote health monitoring via AI and wireless signals, and the development of digital biomarkers for the progression and detection of Parkinson’s disease, applying this technology to advance objective and sensitive measurement of disease course and treatment response in clinical trials.”
Katabi is director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing. She is also a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and leads a network in the MIT research group. Katabi earned his bachelor’s degree from Damascus University and his master’s and doctorate degrees in computer science from MIT. She is a MacArthur Fellow. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering. Winner of the ACM Computing Award.
Other MIT alumni selected as 2025 NAM members include:
- Christopher S. Chen SM ’93, PhD ’97, a graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program.
- Michael E. Matheny SM ’06, graduate of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program. and
- Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum SM ’87, PhD ’90, a graduate of the Department of Physics and the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program.
Originally established by the National Academy of Sciences as the Institute of Medicine in 1970, the National Academy of Medicine addresses important issues in health, science, medicine, and related policy and inspires positive action across the fields.
NAM Chairman Victor J. Dzau said: “Their demonstrated excellence in tackling public health challenges, leading major discoveries, improving health care, advancing health policy, and addressing health equity will critically strengthen our collective ability to address the most pressing health challenges of our time.”
