[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 13, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HONORING NOBEL LAUREATE ARDEM PATAPOUTIAN

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MIKE LEVIN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 13, 2022

  Mr. LEVIN of California. Madam Speaker, it is my great honor today to 
recognize Dr. Ardem Patapoutian, a constituent, a neuroscientist, and a 
Nobel Laureate, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or 
Medicine in 2021.
  Dr. Ardem Patapoutian was born in Lebanon in 1967 to Armenian 
parents. The youngest of three children, Ardem lived in Beirut until 
1986 when he emigrated to Los Angeles, California, to escape the 
Lebanese Civil War.
  Upon arriving to the United States, Dr. Patapoutian worked as an 
editor for the English section of an Armenian newspaper and a pizza 
delivery driver before being accepted into the cell and developmental 
biology program at the University of California, Los Angeles, an 
admission that changed the course of his professional life.
  Falling in love with research, he would go on to obtain a Ph.D. in 
Biology from the California Institute of Technology in 1996, and a 
postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, San 
Francisco. In 2000, he began the work at the Scripps Research Institute 
in La Jolla, California, that awarded him the Nobel Prize 21 years 
later.
  Before being honored with the Nobel Prize, Dr. Patapoutian achieved a 
distinguished career as a scientist and professor. He was a co-
recipient of, among many other awards, the 2020 Kavli Prize in 
Neuroscience. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. and a fellow at the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science. He has maintained a full 
professorship at Scripps Research since 2008 and is an investigator at 
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
  Dr. Patapoutian's work focuses on mechanosensation, the process by 
which mechanical stimuli convert into biological signals that influence 
the functions of our bodies. Specifically, Dr. Patapoutian was awarded 
the Nobel Prize for his discoveries of how our body feels and processes 
temperature and touch. His breakthrough research will not only further 
the understanding of how our bodies work, but it will help create 
better medications and therapies to treat neuropathic pain, 
hypertension, blood disorders, and other conditions, improving the 
lives of residents of California's 49th Congressional District, our 
country, and the world.

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