High honors for two UNC professors: Melina Kibbe and Aziz Sancar have just been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Kibbe and Sancar are two of only 70 inductees this year from across the country. Fewer than 2,000 members have been inducted since the Academy’s founding in 1970.

Melina Kibbe is chair of UNC’s Department of Surgery and editor-in-chief of the journal JAMA Surgery; a statement from UNC also describes her as “an advocate for gender equality in biomedical research.”

Read the full statement from UNC.

Aziz Sancar is a renowned professor of biochemistry and biophysics; his research on DNA repair also earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year.

Twenty-one other UNC professors have been inducted into the National Academy of Medicine – including UNC’s other Nobel laureate, Oliver Smithies.

Click here for a full list of UNC’s other inductees.