Finding a scientific path through course work

"The courses at Rockefeller are the best and most inspiring I've ever had."

After college, Oliver worked as a technician at the Pasteur Institute and at UC San Diego. "I was fascinated by the way courses were organized here," Oliver says. "Günter Blobel's cell biology course really helped me to think like a scientist."

"We had fantastic speakers from every different field coming to tell us about their work and how it evolved over the past 20 years. Then every other week, we'd have a discussion group, and we would try to think of new ideas they hadn't looked at. It was like imagining we were starting our own labs, and we had to teach ourselves how to ask the right questions."

Oliver also tagged along to see the play Copenhagen with author Jonathan Weiner's Science and Literature class. "At Rockefeller, you can learn cell biology from a Nobel laureate and science writing from a Pulitzer Prize-winner."