Awards
- Bicentennial Medal - 2020
- Distinguished Professor - 2010
- National Academies - 2007
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Titled Professor - 2001
- Chancellor's Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
About Howard J. Edenberg
Professor Edenberg received his A.B. degree summa cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1968, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. He received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship for studies at Stanford University, from which he received an M.A. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 1973. He received a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship for research at M.I.T. and an N.I.H. Postdoctoral Fellowship for further research there and at Harvard Medical School. He joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Indiana University School of Medicine in 1977 as Assistant Professor, and advanced through the ranks to Professor in 1986. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Hormone Research Institute, U.C. San Francisco, from 1985-1986. He accepted a joint appointment in Medical and Molecular Genetics in 1987.
Professor Edenberg's research focuses on the genetics and genomics of alcoholism, bipolar disorder and other complex diseases, and spans interrelated areas that extend from genome-wide searches for genes affecting the risk for disease to molecular studies of the mechanisms by which associated variants affect gene expression, and from studies of the regulation of individual genes to transcriptome-wide studies and related bioinformatics. He is one of the National PIs of the long-running Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism, and one of the founders and leaders of the Substance Use Disorders working group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, which is assembling meta-analyses to increase our ability to find genes affecting risk for alcohol and other substances of abuse.
His research on alcohol dehydrogenase genes and alcoholism was recognized by his peers in the form of election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and his receipt of the Research Society on Alcoholism Distinguished Researcher Award for 2009.
Dr. Edenberg has served on NIH study sections and on the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA/NIH) and on its External Advisory Board. He founded the Center for Medical Genomics at the School of Medicine, and is a member of the Indiana CTSI Executive Committee. He chaired the Biomedical Research Committee of the Indiana University School of Medicine for 11 years, among other committees and task forces. He received the Indiana University School of Medicine Faculty Teaching Award in 1993.
Edenberg received the IU Bicentennial Medal in August 2020 in recognition of his distinguished contributions to Indiana University.