37 students to receive Ph.D.s at Rockefeller’s 52nd Commencement

The Rockefeller University will award doctoral degrees to 37 students at its commencement ceremony on Thursday, June 10. In addition, two respected scholars will receive honorary doctor of science degrees: Hanna Holborn Gray, historian, president emeritus of The University of Chicago and chairman of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Harold E. Varmus, Nobel laureate and president and chief executive of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

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: Maya Bader, Amrita Basu, Jacob T. Bendor, Shyam Bhaskaran, Patrick Bhola, Matthew J. Bick, Sung Wook Chi, Chad Euler, Monica Fazzini, Evan Feinberg, Alexis Robert Gambis, Aaron David Goldberg, Elizabeth Goneska, Neeraj Kapoor, Eimear Kenny, Lee Maxine Kiang, Lukasz Kowalik, Young Nam Lee, Bluma Jessica Lesch, Ying Lu, Robert Kendall McGinty, Justin N. McManus, Melinda Miller, Kevin Mohammed, Aaron Nagiel, Johanna Napetschnig, John T.G. Pena, Assaf Raz, Joshua J. Riegelhaupt, Jonathan A. Robbins, Brad R. Rosenberg, Yasunori Saheki, Daniel Schmidt, Steven Joseph Soll, Boo Shan Tseng, Eileen Woo and Maria Zhadina.

Hanna Holborn Gray, doctor of science, honoris causa, is president emeritus and Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Chicago and chairman of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A historian with special interests in the history of humanism, political and historical thought, church history and politics in the Renaissance and the Reformation, Gray was the first woman provost at Yale University and was the first woman president of The University of Chicago. At Chicago, she became the first woman to serve as the chief executive of a major research university. Gray is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education and the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds honorary degrees from over 60 colleges and universities. She received the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan at ceremonies marking the rekindling of the Statue of Liberty’s lamp in 1986 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President George H.W. Bush in 1991, among many other awards.

Harold E. Varmus, doctor of science, honoris causa, is former director of the National Institutes of Health and co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer. He has served as the president and chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City since January 2000. Much of Varmus’s scientific work was conducted during 23 years as a faculty member at UCSF Medical School, where he and his colleagues demonstrated the cellular origins of the oncogene of a chicken retrovirus. Varmus is also widely recognized for his studies of the replication cycles of retroviruses and hepatitis B viruses, the functions of genes implicated in cancer, and the development of mouse models of human cancer. Varmus has authored over 300 scientific papers and five books, including an introduction to the genetic basis of cancer for a general audience and a memoir, The Art and Politics of Science (Norton, 2009). He was appointed by President Barack Obama as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine, Varmus has received the National Medal of Science and the Vannevar Bush Award, among many other honors.