At its May meeting, the FASEB Board of Directors chose Janet Rossant as the 2004 winner of the Excellence in Science Award. Dr. Rossant was recommended by the Federation's Excellence in Science Committee based on the extraordinary contributions that she made to science and the profession throughout her career, which has spanned over 25 years.

Among her accomplishments, Rossant has made key advances in both the basic science and technical aspects of mouse development.  Her work has had major influences in her field of developmental biology, stem cells and cell lineage. In addition, Rossant's creativity in developing enabling mouse model technologies and tools transcends this discipline and has influenced much of modern biomedical science.  She has been a pioneer in the use of chimeric mouse embryos, embryonic stem cells, in situ markers and lineage-specific ablation strategies to effectively study developmental processes and analyze mutants.