Teresa Davoli awarded David Rockefeller Fellowship

Teresa Davoli has had a powerful interest in cancer biology since high school, when she started scouring books on the subject. She’s inspired by efforts to find treatments for the deadly diseases that target specific molecular interactions, as opposed to the relatively blunt carpet bombing of chemotherapy. Ms. Davoli is pursuing that aim as a member of Titia de Lange’s Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics. For her research accomplishments and contributions off campus as well, she was awarded this year’s David Rockefeller Fellowship.

A native of Parma, Italy, Ms. Davoli earned her bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Pisa and a master’s in medical biotechnology from the FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology at San Raffaele University in Milan. On the advice of her mentor Pier Giuseppe Pelicci in Milan, and after an encouraging visit with Rockefeller’s Elaine Fuchs, Ms. Davoli joined Rockefeller in 2006. Following a rotation in Dr. Fuchs’s Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, Ms. Davoli took a turn in Dr. de Lange’s lab, where she “got lucky” with the results of her initial work, on the molecular basis of genomic instability. She decided she wanted to see the project through.

Ms. Davoli is studying telomeres, the structures that cap and protect the ends of chromosomes. In what Dr. de Lange describes as “a breathtaking period of two years,” Ms. Davoli worked out how telomere dysfunction leads to chromosomal aberrations that can cause cancer. The experiments were published by Cell in April. Now she wants to find out whether her discoveries about telomere dysfunction in various model systems apply in people as well, and she’s collaborating with a pathologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to that end. “I’m really interested to see whether this has implications for human tumors,” she says. “That’s the challenge now.”

The laboratory doesn’t consume all of her energy, however. Since her college days, Ms. Davoli has volunteered with the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international organization that reaches out to disadvantaged or underserved communities. In Italy, she taught biology to young students. Now, in New York, she makes weekly visits to nursing home patients and advocates for them with social service providers. She has been a Women & Science Fellow. And as an Anderson Cancer Center Graduate Fellow, she helps organize the annual Anderson Cancer Symposium at Rockefeller. She is also a regular participant in Genome Integrity meetings at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Ms. Davoli did not think much of it this spring when Dr. de Lange asked for a copy of her curriculum vitae. When Sidney Strickland, dean of graduate and postgraduate studies, called her in the lab about two weeks later and asked if she could come to his office — right then — she worried. “He said it was nothing bad, but still, it was a little scary.” The news that she had won the fellowship was a welcome surprise.

“Teresa is an extremely gifted scientist who is active outside of the laboratory,” says Dr. Strickland. “Her devotion to her research and also community service is very much in keeping with the ideals of the David Rockefeller Fellowship.