William G. Kaelin, Jr., has been named a recipient of the 2016 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. The Lasker Awards are widely considered among the highest scientific honors and recognize the most outstanding and seminal contributions to biomedical science. Dr. Kaelin received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his MD from Duke University Medical School. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and associate director, Basic Science, for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Dr. Kaelin will share the award with Peter J. Ratcliffe of the University of Oxford/Francis Crick Institute, and Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The three won the award for their "discovery of the pathway by which cells from human and most animals sense and adapt to changes in oxygen availability, a process that is essential for survival."