Andrew Feig Joins RCSA as Program Director
Wayne State University Professor of Chemistry Andrew Feig is joining Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) as a Program Director at the end of this academic year.
Feig’s research in recent years has focused on non-coding RNAs involved in post-transcriptional gene regulation in bacteria and inhibition of Clostridium difficile toxins A & B. At RCSA he will focus primarily on the expansion of the Foundation’s Scialog program into areas in which the physical sciences can contribute new perspective on challenges in life and biomedical sciences, according to RCSA President Daniel Linzer.
“We are delighted to welcome Andrew to Foundation,” Linzer said. “As a longtime member of the RCSA community, he’s a highly accomplished scientist as well as a dedicated teacher who emphasizes learning in both the classroom and the laboratory.”
Feig said one of the main attractions that draws him to RCSA is the opportunity Scialog presents to aid in the creation of new fields of study” by formulating conference topics and recruiting participants from diverse disciplines to form competitive teams to engage in cutting-edge research.
Scialog supports research, intensive dialog and community building to address scientific challenges of global significance. Within each multi-year initiative, Scialog Fellows collaborate in high-risk/high-reward research to explore untested ideas and communicate their progress in annual closed conferences. Recently the RCSA Board of Directors approved an agreement with the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation (FGCF), to pursue Scialog-funded basic research at the intersection of the physical and life/biomedical sciences. The FGCF was established by Research Corporation Technologies, which was spun off from RCSA as an independent entity in 1987. [For more on this expansion of the Scialog program, go here.]
A Cottrell Scholar since 2002, Feig co-founded the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative New Faculty Workshop in collaboration with Prof. Rory Waterman, chemistry, University of Vermont, and the American Chemical Society. The annual workshop promotes student-centered teaching by helping to fill training gaps between what chemists are taught in graduate school and the skills needed to excel in their faculty positions.
Feig helped design and implement the NIH-funded ReBUILDetroit program aimed at diversifying the biomedical workforce by providing a first-year curriculum that removed barriers and provided support for underrepresented students as they transitioned into mentored research experiences. He led the NSF-funded institutional transformation project at Wayne State to help faculty adopt evidence-based instructional practices.
Feig received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Yale University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the years, he has received numerous awards including: Westinghouse Science Talent Search Scholarship (1986), WSU President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2014), and Michigan Professor of the Year (2015). He received the RNA Society’s Lifetime Service Award (2017) for his work as the Society’s CFO and is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2018). He currently serves as an editor for The Biophysicist, a biophysics education journal launched in 2019 by the Biophysical Society.
