Hugo J. Bellen

Hugo J. Bellen is a Belgian-born American geneticist born in 1953 in Belgium who is a distinguished service professor at Baylor College of Medicine and an investigator emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study the nervous system. He pioneered P element enhancer detection technology, developed methods for inserting large fragments of DNA into the fly genome, created the MiMIC transposable element system for tagging proteins and reducing gene expression, and through large scale genetic screens identified more than one hundred sixty five genes that cause neurodegeneration when mutated, alongside foundational studies of how signals pass between neurons at the synapse. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020, received the George W. Beadle Award in 2014, and received the Gruber Prize in Genetics in 2024.