Newswise — A renowned molecular biologist and an internationally acclaimed global health leader from UC San Francisco have been elected as members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which recognizes the world’s most accomplished leaders in science, social science, humanities, arts, business, nonprofits and public affairs.

The Academy’s class of 2014, which was announced this morning, has 204 new members, including two members of the UCSF faculty:

• Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology, and the Nick and Sue Hellman Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine at UCSF, is director of the UCSF-affiliated David J. Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology. He is renowned for his research into human retroviruses such as HIV and his efforts to find new approaches to therapy for them.

• Jaime Sepúlveda, MD, MPH, MSc, DrSc, is executive director of UCSF Global Health Sciences. He was formerly a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he played a key role in shaping the foundation’s global health strategy, and Vice-Minister of Health in Mexico, where he designed the country’s universal vaccination program, modernized the national health surveillance system and founded Mexico’s National AIDS Counsel.

Greene and Sepúlveda join 55 other UCSF faculty members who have been elected to the Academy in previous years. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 11, 2014, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The academy also recognized philanthropist Chuck Feeney who, through The Atlantic Philanthropies, which he founded, has donated $292 million in support of UCSF and its new campus at Mission Bay, making him the largest single contributor to any UC campus.

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has served as a scholarly society and independent policy research center, convening leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to address critical challenges worldwide and providing nonpartisan policy advice to decision-makers in government, academia, and the private sector.

The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. A complete list of new members, as well as the Academy’s new release, can be found on the Academy’s web site.

UCSF is the nation’s leading university exclusively focused on health. Now celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding as a medical college, UCSF is dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with world-renowned programs in the biological sciences, a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and two top-tier hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco. Please visit www.ucsf.edu.