At their 2025 Newborn Screening Symposium, October 5-9, 2025, the Association of Public Health Laboratories presented Professor Michael H. Gelb, the Boris and Barbara L. Weinstein Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the University of Washington, with the 2025 Harry Hannon Laboratory Improvement Award in Newborn Screening. This award honors those who have made significant contributions in one or more of the following areas: assuring the quality of testing, enhancing the specificity of tests, establishing new creative laboratory approaches and technologies, providing laboratory training/education for new technologies and tests, or improving the detection of newborn disorders/conditions. This year, Gelb shares this award with Patricia Hunt, the manager of the Newborn Screening Metabolic Branch of Texas Department of State Health Services.
Additionally, WORLDSymposium announced that Gelb was selected as the recipient of the 3rd Annual Catalyst Award to be presented at WORLDSymposium 2026. This award recognizes Gelb’s significant international contributions to newborn screening and the wide-reaching positive impact it has had on families living with lysosomal diseases in numerous countries around the world. The 2026 Catalyst Award will be presented at the WORLDSymposium 2026 Be the Catalyst event on Monday, February 2, 2026, and Gelb will share his pioneering research in a special keynote session on Newborn Screening on Thursday, February 5, 2026.
Gelb joined the UW faculty in 1985 and is known internationally for his research on enzymes and inborn genetic diseases called lysosomal storage diseases. He has long worked to develop assays to detect lysosomal storage diseases and other rare treatable genetic diseases in newborn screening. Additionally, the Gelb group has been working to develop treatments for neglected tropical diseases, such as Chagas disease. A longtime project with the lab of Fred Buckner, MD in the UW Department of Medicine has evolved into a collaboration with the Drug Discovery Institute (University of Dundee, UK) and Glaxo Smith/Kline (Madrid, Spain).
Gelb is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of the National Mucopolysaccharidosis Society Legacy Award (2024); Robert Guthrie Award (International Society of Neonatal Screening, 2023); Repligen Award in the Chemistry of Biological Processes (American Chemical Society, 2018); University of Washington Faculty Lecture Award (2017); Gustavus John Esselen Award (Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society, 2013); among others.
Congratulations, Prof. Gelb, on these two recent accolades!