2005 Finalist Justin Blau, Ph.D.

For his essay "How Flies Time: Circadian Clocks in Drosophila." Dr. Blau was born and raised in London, England. He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University in 1991, and his Ph.D. from the Imperial Cancer Reseach Fund, where he studied basic mechanisms of eukaryotic transcription with David Bentley. After graduating in 1996, he joined Mike Young's lab at the Rockefeller University in New York to study how clock genes drive daily (circadian) rhythms of behavior in Drosophila. Dr. Blau started his own lab at New York University in 2000, where he continues to investigate how genes and neurons interact to drive this fundamental behavior.

For the full text of the essays by the Prize Winner and Finalists, see Science Online at sciencemag.com.