23 students receive Ph.D.s at Rockefeller's 53rd commencement

The Rockefeller University will award doctoral degrees to 23 students at its commencement ceremony today. In addition, two respected scholars will receive honorary doctor of science degrees: Richard Axel of Columbia University and the



Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Linda B. Buck of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Each doctoral candidate will be presented for the degree by his or her mentor, a tradition dating back to the university’s first commencement ceremony in 1959. Honorary degree recipients will make brief remarks after receiving their degrees.

Recipients of the doctoral degrees are: Erika Dewyllie Billick, Anne Helen Bothmer, Michael Chiorazzi, Nicole Creanza, Shelli F. Farhadian, Robert Jonathan Fenster, Zak Frentz, Felice Kelly, Jeffrey Hoon Kim, Adria Claire Le Boeuf, Geulah Livshits, Tapan Apurva Maniar, Catherine Oikonomou, Grigorios Oikonomou, Margherita Peliti, Maurizio Pellegrino, Andrea Geoghegan Procko, Jonathan E. Schmitz, Jason Schwarz, Matthew Sekedat, Alice O. Kamphorst Silva, Clare Walton and John Paul Wilson.

Richard Axel, doctor of science, honoris causa, has integrated molecular biology to problems in neuroscience with the expectation that genetics could interface with neuroscience to approach the tenuous relationship between genes, behavior and perception. His studies on the logic of the sense of smell revealed over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odors and provided insight into how genes shape our perception of the sensory environment. For a series of pioneering studies that clarified in exquisite detail how the sense of smell works, he shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Buck.

Linda B. Buck, doctor of science, honoris causa, studies exactly how odor molecules in the environment are detected by specialized receptors in the nose and then translated by the brain into specific smells. Her groundbreaking research has in large part unraveled the mechanisms that underlie our sense of smell. For this work, she shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Axel “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.”