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Luciano Marraffini works to understand how bacteria acquire foreign DNA
by ZACH VEILLEUX Luciano Marraffini, a microbiologist, is interested in how bacterial pathogens modulate the transfer of foreign DNA into their genomes. He joined the university on July 1 as assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology. Fundamentally, Dr. Marraffini wants to un...
Daniel Kronauer uses molecular genetics to study social evolution in insects
by BRETT NORMAN Daniel Kronauer, who will join Rockefeller in July 2011 as head of the Laboratory of Insect Social Evolution, is interested in understanding how evolution operates at different levels of organization in the rich context of insect societies, from the gene to the individual and soci...
Milestones
Awarded: Jean-Laurent Casanova, a Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The $100,000 grant is one of 78 announced by the foundation in May to support scientists exploring bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. Dr. Casanova...
Paul Nurse named top of the list of 100 most important people in British science
Rockefeller University President Paul Nurse is the number one scientist in a list of the 100 most important people in British science. The list, first of its kind, will be published today in the first anniversary issue of Eureka, the monthly science magazine of London’s daily newspaper, The Ti...
Paul Bieniasz promoted to professor
Virologist Paul Bieniasz, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Retrovirology and a scientist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, has been awarded tenure and promoted to professor. Bieniasz, who studies retroviruses such as HIV, has been instrumental in discovering how retroviruses coloniz...
Marc Tessier-Lavigne named Rockefeller University’s tenth president
The Rockefeller University announced today that its Board of Trustees has elected Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a leader in the study of brain development who is currently executive vice president for research and chief scientific officer at Genentech, as its tenth president. He will succeed Paul Nurse,...
New faculty member studies evolution of social behavior in insects
A scientist who uses the tools of molecular genetics to study the social evolution of insects has been appointed assistant professor at Rockefeller University. Daniel Kronauer will join Rockefeller in July 2011 as head of the Laboratory of Insect Social Evolution, the third and latest recruit in...
Ted Scovell named director of university’s science outreach program
For some high school students, summer is a time for travel, camping and lying on the beach. But for others, it’s the perfect opportunity to study an HIV coreceptor or a nuclear pore protein. The director of Rockefeller University’s Science Outreach Program, Ted Scovell, can help with that. A...
Convocation 2010
                          With the graduation of its 52nd class, the alumni of The Rockefeller University’s graduate program now number 1,047. This year’s Convocation celebration included a French bistro-themed reception in the President’s House, a luncheon, the tra...
Science, education leaders accept honorary degrees
This year’s recipients of honorary doctor of science degrees, Hanna Holborn Gray and Harold E. Varmus, have played major roles in shaping education and science in the United States. Dr. Gray, president emeritus of the University of Chicago, recently retired after 13 years as chairman of the board...
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 che...
Teaching awards honor Gilbert and Rice
Charles D. Gilbert, head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology, and Charles M. Rice, head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease, were the recipients of this year’s Rockefeller University Distinguished Teaching Awards. Established in 2005 to recognize outstanding individual contribution...
Microbiologist to join Rockefeller faculty
A microbiologist who studies how bacterial pathogens modulate the transfer of foreign DNA into their genomes has been named Rockefeller’s newest faculty member. Luciano Marraffini will join the university on July 1 as assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology. His appointment...
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 chairma...
New faculty member seeks secrets of intestinal immunity
Daniel Mucida, a scientist who studies the mechanisms of intestinal immunity, has been named assistant professor and will join Rockefeller University as head of the Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology in September. Mucida’s appointment was the result of the university’s fall 2009 open faculty s...
Leslie Vosshall promoted to professor
The university’s Board of Trustees has granted tenure to Leslie B. Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, and she has been promoted from associate professor to become the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor. The Board approved the promotion at its March 10 meeting. Vosshal...
Searching for a new president
As you know, Paul Nurse will be leaving Rockefeller at the end of the year to take up the presidency of the Royal Society in London. The vice chairs of the Board of Trustees and I, together with the Executive Committee of the Board, have now decided on the process we will follow to identify a new...
Smith Hall to open in July
With construction crews from Turner and its subcontractors installing the final finishes in Smith Hall and the bridging building, Planning and Construction is making plans to begin moving the first of eleven labs into their new spaces starting the first week in July. “Everything is on schedul...
Library expands digital offerings
E-books and e-book readers are among new products available for loan by JOSEPH BONNER When publishers first began to offer digital content, electronic access was typically available for just slightly more than a print subscription. Today, according to university librarian Carol Feltes, subscribin...
Debra Black and Ajit Jain elected to Board of Trustees
by JOSEPH BONNER Debra Black, co-founder of the Melanoma Research Alliance, and Ajit Jain, president of the Reinsurance and Specialty Risk Division at Berkshire Hathaway Group, are the newest members of Rockefeller University’s Board of Trustees. They were elected to the board on March 10. M...
Leslie Vosshall granted tenure
by ZACH VEILLEUX The university’s Board of Trustees has granted tenure to Leslie B. Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, and she has been promoted from associate professor to become the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor. The Board approved the promotion at its March 10 m...
Ted Scovell named new director of Science Outreach
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Textbooks and Wikipedia are fine for facts, but to really learn science, you need access to a lab. In his new position as director of Rockefeller University’s Science Outreach Program, Ted Scovell, a former high school teacher himself, hopes to give new generations of youn...
Junior gardeners get their hands dirty
The azaleas may be the standout botanical feature on Rockefeller’s campus at the moment, but be on the lookout for new additions. Junior gardeners at the Child and Family Center have begun planting gardens around the westernmost of two fountains on the north side of Caspary Auditorium’s blue dom...
Martin Rees is 2009 Lewis Thomas Prize winner
by JOSEPH BONNER For as long as humans have gazed at the night sky, we have questioned our place in the universe and how and where it all began. Martin Rees, the celebrated British cosmologist and astrophysicist, has chronicled scientists’ speculations about the cosmos through seven volumes of po...
Milestones
Awarded: Nam-Hai Chua, the Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research from the American Society of Plant Biologists. Dr. Chua, Andrew W. Mellon Professor and head of the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology, is honored for his development of fundamental tools essential to co...
Rockefeller immunologist receives Gates Foundation Grand Challenges grant
Rockefeller University has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Jean-Laurent Casanova, head of the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases, aim...
New faculty member seeks secrets of intestinal immunity
by ZACH VEILLEUX The skin may be our first line of defense against infection, but its job is easy compared to our intestines. There the body must cope with a constant stream of foreign antigens from our food as well as a flourishing ecosystem of bacteria, viruses and parasites. It must not only f...
Paul Nurse to resign as Rockefeller president to become president of Royal Society of London in December
Paul Nurse, Rockefeller University’s president since 2003, will leave the university in December 2010 to assume the presidency of the Royal Society of London. The Royal Society of London is the British equivalent of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The president of the Royal Society acts...
Announcements
University Web site is redesigned. Communications and Public Affairs and Information Technology have launched phase one of the university’s new Web site design, including the new home page as well as the Scientists & Research, Newswire and About sections. The design overhaul will continue through...
The Rockefeller University's finances
This is a reproduction of a memo sent to campus from President Paul Nurse on Monday, March 8. A year ago, during a period of worldwide economic turmoil, I wrote to you about the university’s finances. In July we held our last “town hall” meeting when I updated the community on developments. I...
Physics-biology symposium kicks off 
joint Rockefeller/IAS initiative
by THANIA BENIOS An inaugural symposium named for Joshua Lederberg and John von Neumann, held in December at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, was the first of a series of collaborative events between Rockefeller University and the IAS to be held regularly as part of a jo...
Faculty search benefits from down economy
by ZACH VEILLEUX As the fifth year of the university’s open faculty search enters its final round, applicants are up by 60 percent compared to fall 2008, and members of the search committee say the pool is stronger and more diverse than it has been in the past. A total of 582 people submitted ...
Trustee Christopher Browne dies at 62
by JOSEPH BONNER Christopher H. Browne, a member of The Rockefeller University Board of Trustees for the last 12 years, died of a heart attack on December 13, 2009. He was 62 years old. Mr. Browne joined The Rockefeller University Council, an international advisory group whose members serve as...
The CFC hits the books
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Story time has been reimagined. With money raised from a raffle held last winter, the Child and Family Center has revitalized and reorganized its collection of children’s books and established a dedicated reading area for the center’s 100-plus children. CFC staff welcome...
Rockefeller University Hospital celebrates 100 years
Later this year, on October 26, the Rockefeller University Hospital will celebrate its 100th birthday. In the century since its founding, more than 100 notable discoveries have been associated with the hospital, research that has bridged the work of physicians and scientists and addressed some of...
Bright lights, safe city
Last December — just in time for the late-winter onslaught of driving snow and slippery ice — Plant Operations replaced the 50-year-old streetlamps lining the university’s main drive up to Founder’s Hall with new ones outfitted with brighter, LED bulbs. The new fixtures, which use about 90 p...
Milestones
Awarded: Paul Bieniasz, the 2010 Eli Lilly and Company Research Award from the American Society for Microbiology, the society’s oldest and most prestigious prize. Dr. Bieniasz, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Retrovirology and an investigator at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and t...
Announcements
Feeding holiday hunger. In conjunction with the student-initiated holiday food collection drive, which ran from December 1 to 18, Restaurant Associates has provided several turkeys and traditional holiday side dishes to City Harvest for its holiday dinners served to the homeless and hungry at sou...
University receives nearly $27m in ‘stimulus’ grants
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Investigators at The Rockefeller University have so far been awarded 41 federal grants and supplemental awards through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) — the so-called “stimulus” legislation passed by Congress last winter. The awards — 40 fro...
William Huyett joins Board of Trustees
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN William I. Huyett Jr., a director at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company and a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, has joined the university’s Board of Trustees. A senior executive in McKinsey’s pharma-medical products practice, Mr. Huyett was elect...
Aetna network, Cornell psychiatrists expand reach of health plan
by ZACH VEILLEUX Several improvements to the university’s self-insured health plan and flexible spending accounts, which the university’s Human Resources Office says will enhance the plans, reduce costs to the university and to plan participants and help eliminate some paperwork, have been impl...
Burglary in Bronk; fire in Flexner
Burglary in Bronk; fire in Flexner Alert employees help contain damage from two separate incidents in November by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Two incidents on campus last month demonstrated the importance of campus participation in notifying Security personnel to potential problems. A burglary in Detlev...
Pearl Meister Greengard Prize honors Australian geneticist
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Women’s work. From left, Paul Greengard, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Suzanne Cory, Wafaa El-Sadr and Paul Nurse. This year’s Pearl Meister Greengard Prize recognizes Suzanne Cory, an Australian geneticist whose work has included significant revelations about the workings of t...
Boil, boil, toil and trouble
New boiler to increase efficiency of university’s heating and cooling by TALLEY HENNING BROWN Boiler number four. The new Cleaver-Brooks boiler in its new home. Below the buildings of the south campus, three levels underground and reached by a labyrinth of stairways, are the millions of pipes, pi...
Rockefeller stem cell lines among first to be NIH-approved
by JOSEPH BONNER Two human embryonic stem cell lines derived at Rockefeller are among the first to be approved for use in federally funded research since the National Institutes of Health adopted new guidelines in July 2009. The approval means that cell lines derived at the university can be mad...
Philip Siekevitz, pioneer in cell biology, dies at 91
by JOSEPH BONNER Philip Siekevitz was a passionate New Yorker. Through a nearly century-long life, he was an active participant in the city’s cultural, music, art and architecture scenes — and, especially, in its science. Professor Emeritus Philip Siekevitz, a member of The Rockefeller Un...
Microchemist S. Theodore Bella dies at 88
S. Theodore Bella, retired long-time microanalyst at The Rockefeller University, died Monday, November 23 at his Florida home after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and cardiac issues. He was 88. Mr. Bella operated a laboratory in Flexner Hall for 41 years, using emerging techniques in ...
Milestones
Awarded: Michael Crickmore, Grand Prize in the 2009 GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists, an essay competition. Dr. Crickmore, a postdoctoral fellow in Leslie B. Vosshall’s Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, won for his essay titled “The Molecular Basis of Size Differences,” bas...
Rockefeller joins first national research study recruitment registry
Rockefeller University has joined more than 50 research institutions around the United States in making information about its clinical research trials available on ResearchMatch, the country’s first registry for recruiting research participants. ResearchMatch.org, which is a not-for-profit Web si...
Announcements
Short sharp science. Communications and Public Affairs has added a Twitter feed to the university’s social media presence (see Rockefeller’s Facebook profile and YouTube channel). To stay up-to-date on the latest findings from Rockefeller labs, visit twitter.com/RockefellerUniv. 2009 golf outing...
Labs take shape in Collaborative Research Center
For more photos and video of the construction progress, visit crc.rockefeller.edu. A little over two years after the jackhammers and bobcats first went to work on Smith Hall, the end is in sight, and the work on the Collaborative Research Center has progressed both on time and on budget. By late ...
High honors for Friedman, Fuchs
The scientific community’s spotlight was focused on Rockefeller University at the start of this academic year when two faculty members — Marilyn M. Simpson Professor Jeffrey M. Friedman and Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor Elaine Fuchs — each received two highly prestigious prizes. In June, Dr....
Cost containment measures
This message is reprinted from a letter sent to campus via e-mail on October 28. As part of the cost containment initiative that the administration launched as a consequence of the economic downturn, we have recently examined the range of events held annually on campus. We have decided to make so...
Environmental health and safety program wins award
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN On the safe side. The Office of Laboratory Safety and Environmental Health, from left to right: James Gugluzza, Amy Wilkerson, Anthony Santoro, Rebecca Lonergan, Frank Schaefer, Anthony Harper, Gaitree McNab, Beth Fitzgerald and Elsie Calo. Probing the depths of human dise...
Alumnus Robert Sapolsky honored with 2008 Lewis Thomas Prize
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN It is a rare child who dreams of growing up to be a mountain gorilla. When, for young Robert Morris Sapolsky, such lofty aspirations proved less than feasible, he decided on the next most exciting life — becoming a scientist. Upon graduating with a Ph.D. from The Rockefell...
Tenure awarded to RNA researcher Thomas Tuschl
by THANIA BENIOS Biochemist Thomas Tuschl, head of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of RNA Molecular Biology, has been awarded tenure and promoted to professor. Dr. Tuschl, who studies the mechanisms by which RNA can regulate genes, has been instrumental in uncovering the intricate roles playe...
New measures tighten ship on security protocols
by TALLEY HENNING BROWN At the gates, behind the cameras and at every electronic lock, campus security is watching. And since last winter, they’ve been watching a little more closely. In an effort to patch gaps in the university’s security protocols, Director of Security James Rogers, in conjun...
New library Web site launches
by TALLEY HENNING BROWNThe university’s library has a rich history — it has been the campus repository for scientific journals and textbooks since it opened in 1906. But while once it was mostly accessed via a reading room on the first floor of Founder’s Hall, today the gateway to that reposit...
Milestones
Awarded:Sreekanth H. Chalasani and Shai Shaham, finalists in the 2009 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. Dr. Chalasani, a postdoc in Cori Bargmann’s Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, will receive a grant of $5,000. Dr. Shaham, head of the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics, will r...
Elaine Fuchs receives National Medal of Science
Elaine Fuchs, Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor and head of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at Rockefeller University, has been named a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the White House announced today. The medal is the nation’s highest scientific honor. Fuchs,...
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