Huda Yahya Zoghbi

Huda Yahya Zoghbi (Arabic: هدى الهبري الزغبي Hudā al-Hibrī az-Zughbī; born 1954), born Huda El-Hibri, is a Lebanese-born American geneticist, and a professor at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine. Her work helped elucidate mechanisms of Rett syndrome and spinocerebellar ataxia type 1. In 2017, she was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Early life and education

Huda Zoghbi was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1954, and raised in Beirut. She loved reading works by William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and William Wordsworth in high school and intended to pursue literature at university. Her mother convinced her to study biology instead, on the grounds that 'a woman growing up in the Middle East should pick a career ensuring independence and security, while she can always write on the side'. Zoghbi was admitted as a biological sciences major at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1973 and entered the university's medical school 2 years later. In 1976 (the war in Lebanon) she moved to live with her sister in Austin, Texas, and enrolled to Meharry Medical College. Despite her continued desire to return to Lebanon the next summer, on the advice of professors at AUB, she stayed at Meharry and earned an MD degree in 1979, after which she joined the Texas Children's Hospital at the Baylor College of Medicine as a pediatric resident.

Zoghbi initially intended to specialise in pediatric cardiology, out of an interest in the heart. During her rotation at pediatric neurology, Marvin Fishman, the head of the division, convinced her that the brain was more interesting than the heart. She thus started a 3-year term as a postdoctoral researcher in pediatric neurology after she finished her residency in 1982.

From 1982 to 1985, Zoghbi was a postdoctoral researcher in pediatric neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine. She became an assistant professor at the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor in 1988, and was successively promoted to associate professor in 1991 and professor in 1994.[9] At present, Zoghbi is a professor at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor, with appointments as a professor at the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Pediatrics Section of Neurology and Developmental Neuroscience, the Ralph Feigin, M.D. Endowed Chair, the director of the Texas Children's Hospital Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, a member of the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is also a member of the board of directors of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Awards and honors

• Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (2022)
• Victor A. McKusick Leadership Award, American Society of Human Genetics (2019)
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018)
• Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, Molecular Medicine (2018)
• National Order of the Cedar, Lebanon (2018)
• Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2017)
• Canada Gairdner International Award (2017)
• Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal (2016)
• Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine (2016)
• Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science, Northwestern University (2015)
• Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (2015)
• Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of Health (2015)
• American Task Force for Lebanon Award (2015)
• Mortimer D. Sackler, M.D. Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (2015)
• Honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences, Yale University (2014)
• March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (2014)
• Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience, McGovern Institute for Brain Research (2014)
• Dickson Prize in Medicine, University of Pittsburgh (2013)
• Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, Rockefeller University (2013)
• Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2011)
• Vita and Lee Lyman Dewey Tuttle Brookwood Legacy Award (2011)
• International Rett Syndrome Foundation's Circle of Angels Research Award (2009)
• Vilcek Prize for Biomedical Research, Vilcek Foundation (2009)
• Marion Spencer Fay Award, Drexel University College of Medicine (2009)
• Cathedra Laboris, University of Monterrey (2009)
• Honorary Doctor of Science, Meharry Medical College (2008)
• Texas Women's Hall of Fame (2008)
• Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize (2007)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology Arab Students' Organization Science and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award (2007)
• Honorary Doctor of Science, Middlebury College (2007)
• Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Foundation Award in Neuropsychiatry Research (2007)
• Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004)
• Neuronal Plasticity Prize, Ipsen Foundation (2004)
• Marta Philipson Award in Pediatrics, Philipson Foundation for Research (2004)
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002)
• Raymond D. Adams Lectureship, American Neurological Association (2002)
• Bernard Sachs Award, Society for Pediatric Research (2001)
• Member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) (2000)
• Sidney Carter Award, American Academy of Neurology (1998)
• Soriano Lectureship, American Neurological Association (1998)
• Javits Award, NINDS, National Institutes of Health (1998)
• E. Mead Johnson Award, Society of Pediatric Research (1996)
• Kilby International Award (1995)

Personal life

Zoghbi met her husband, William Zoghbi when they were medical students in the American University of Beirut. In 1977, she continued her medical school study in Meharry Medical College, and William transferred to Meharry next year. They both had their residencies in the Baylor College of Medicine after graduation. They married in 1980 and have 2 children. William is the chief of the Department of Cardiology at Houston Methodist Hospital.