Posted on June 10, 2002 at 11:05 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Dr. Charles O. Elson III, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM).

Elson is widely respected for his research into cholera toxin and inflammatory bowel disease. Only 1,700 scientists have been elected to the AAM in its 47-year history.

A graduate of Notre Dame University and of Washington University in St. Louis, Elson trained at Cornell University and the University of Chicago Hospitals. He was on the faculty at Chicago and the Medical College of Virginia and served an appointment at the National Institutes of Health before joining UAB in 1987 as director of the division of gastroenterology. In 1997 he was selected to hold the Basil I. Hirschowitz Endowed Chair in Gastroenterology. In addition to his scientific achievements, he has been active in consumer organizations, serving as chairman of the national scientific advisory committee of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.

The AAM is the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology, the world’s oldest life science organization with more than 43,000 members.