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Yifan Xu Presented by Jeremy Dittman on behalf of Cori Bargmann B.S., Duke University Neural Circuit Dependence of Acute and Subacute Nociception in Caenorhabditis elegans     Most grad students experience some type of pain during their thesis work. For Yifan’s thesis, she decided to work on p...

John Z. Xue Presented by Hironori Funabiki B.A., University of Cambridge Xenopus Dppa2 is a Direct Inhibitor of Microtubule Polymerization Required for Nuclear Assembly         From John Xue’s eloquent British accent, it may be hard to imagine his origin. John was born and raised in Jingbia...

Daria A. Zamolodchikov Presented by Sidney Strickland A.B., Princeton University A New Role for b-Amyloid in Alzheimer’s Disease: Initiation of Thrombotic and Inflammatory Processes via Coagulation Factor XII and Fibrinogen         Let’s consider American Pharoah. It takes intelligence, s...

As the graduating class of 2015 moves on to the next stages of life and career, the Rockefeller community welcomes the incoming group of graduate fellows. There were 689 applications received this year, and after careful consideration by the admissions committee, 81 applicants were offered admiss...

Tiny machines, which convert chemical energy into mechanical work, drive nearly all aspects of life within a cell. Shixin Liu, a biophysicist and Rockefeller’s newest tenure-track faculty member, investigates how these individual motors interact, and, in many cases, cooperate with one another to ...

Thomas Walz, a structural biologist who uses cutting-edge electron microscopy techniques to better understand processes involving biological membranes, will join Rockefeller’s faculty as a tenured professor on September 1. As head of the Laboratory of Molecular Electron Microscopy, Walz will take...

The Rockefeller University’s multi-year initiative to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions will be honored this week with an award from the Association of Energy Engineers. The local award, for institutional energy management of the year, recognizes the consistent achievements of an entire te...

At its convocation ceremony on Thursday, June 11, Rockefeller University presented doctoral degrees to 29 students. In a tradition dating back to the university’s first commencement ceremony in 1959, doctoral candidates received their degrees from their mentors. In addition, Nicole Le Douarin,...

New research center will help attract the best talent to make transformative discoveries Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of The Rockefeller University, today announced a leadership gift of $100 million from The Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation to help create a new laboratory building t...

Kids welcome. In celebration of national Take Your Child to Work Day, Human Resources will host activities for 8- to 12-year-olds from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 23. Children must be registered by April 17 and must be accompanied by an adult to attend. Space is limited. For more information, call ...

More than one in three U.S. adults is obese, a condition that puts them at risk for an alarming array of health problems, from diabetes and heart disease to cancer. But while obesity brings devastating consequences for many, some escape. For a select few, obesity causes little more than sore join...

by ZACH VEILLEUX The Rockefeller University Child and Family Center, long one of the university’s most coveted perks for parents and a model for work-site child care facilities nationwide, will expand by 40 percent this year, with five new classrooms to be constructed on the second floor of the G...

by WYNNE PARRY Andrea Morris’s career in biology has had a few curves. After earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology and doing a postdoc, she took a tenure-track faculty job, teaching and running a lab at a small liberal arts college. But she ultimately gave up tenure, and the bench, to work in high...

by WYNNE PARRY The university’s Board of Trustees elected two new members in October 2014: Weslie Janeway, a philanthropist with a long-standing interest in genetics, and Michael J. Price, an investment advisor specializing in the telecom and technology industries. With their elections, the unive...

by STEPHEN ALTSCHUL Peter H. Sellers, among the earliest researchers on DNA and protein sequence comparison, died of cancer on November 15, 2014, at the age of 84. An obituary was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on November 25. Here, I offer a brief, personal perspective. I first met Pete...

by WYNNE PARRY Richard M. Krause, a former Rockefeller University faculty member who later became director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and presciently warned against complacency toward infectious disease, has died at the age of 90. A fascination with the strep...

The university’s annual holiday lecture for high school students, a tradition dating back to 1960, received a makeover this year. In addition to a new name, “Talking Science,” which debuted in 2013, the lecture was moved to the second Saturday of January, and expanded to include a lunchtime pr...

Awarded: Mary Ellen Conley, the AAI-Steinman Award from the American Association of Immunologists. The award, named for the late Ralph M. Steinman, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology, recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the unders...

Sohail Tavazoie, head of the Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology, has been promoted to associate professor, effective January 1. Tavazoie, who joined Rockefeller in 2009, works to understand how cancer cells become able to escape a tumor and invade other organs, a pro...

More than one in three U.S. adults is obese, a condition that puts them at risk for an alarming array of health problems, from diabetes and heart disease to cancer. But while obesity brings devastating consequences for many, some escape. For a select few, obesity causes little more than sore join...

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of The Rockefeller University, today announced two leadership pledges of $75 million each from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and David Rockefeller to launch a major extension of the University’s campus on the East River. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne said, “These pledg...

Tri-I TDI makes modeling software available. The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute, Inc. (Tri-I TDI) has signed an agreement to provide access to Schrödinger’s materials science, biologics and small‑molecule drug discovery suites to researchers within Tri-I TDI’s member insti...

by WYNNE PARRY Joseph Gleeson, a neurogeneticist who uses genetic sequencing to identify the causes of pediatric brain disease across its spectrum, including epilepsy, autism, intellectual disability and structural disorders, has joined Rockefeller as a professor and established the Laboratory of...

by WYNNE PARRY Hironori Funabiki, head of the Laboratory of Chromosome and Cell Biology, was promoted to professor and granted tenure by the university’s Board of Trustees at its June meeting. Dr. Funabiki studies mitosis, the primary type of cell division that underlies all growth, maintenance a...

by ZACH VEILLEUX Structural biology, in which scientists examine the shapes of specific proteins and protein complexes at a molecular scale, has driven some of biology’s most profound discoveries in the past decade, including insights into neurological signaling, pathogenic processes and DNA tran...

by LESLIE CHURCH Maybe it’s the fact that they both involve a good amount of discipline, or maybe it’s that each requires a certain flair for creative thought. Whatever the reason, many people find themselves drawn to both music and science, and are often faced with the difficult decision of cho...

by WYNNE PARRY An endless stream of compelling discoveries emerges regularly from Rockefeller’s research community and it is the job of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs to make sure those findings are accessible internally and externally. The new executive director of the office, F...

Not as iconic as the breakthrough discoveries and famous names, but a vital part of Rockefeller’s history nonetheless — a pump that supplied vacuum pressure to Rockefeller labs for over half a century — is having its moment in the spotlight. One of the last of its kind in Manhattan, the 1952 p...

Retiring Irma Cardinale Kathleen Cassidy Zheng-Yuan Fu Josip Golja Patrick Griffin Mary Margaret Hickey Ann Ho Artemis Khatcherian Kenneth Kramer Yuk Ching-Ku Tatyana Leonova Ellen Martin Scott McNutt Arquelio Negron John Tooze Yuk-Wah Tsang 60 years Te Piao King Victor Wilson 50 years Vincent A....

by WYNNE PARRY Don Pels, a member of the university’s Board of Trustees for more than two decades, passed away October 16 at home in Manhattan. Mr. Pels, a media executive, joined the board in 1993 and provided crucial support for basic science over many years. A gift he made in 1988 established ...

by WYNNE PARRY Professor Emeritus Peter Robert Marler, whose work in songbird learning established a foundation for understanding how animals communicate, died July 5 at the age of 86 in Winters, California. Dr. Marler joined Rockefeller’s faculty in 1966 and helped establish the Millbrook ...

by ZACH VEILLEUX Lino Saez, a senior research associate and member of Michael W. Young’s Laboratory of Genetics for nearly 30 years, died October 24 at the age of 60. Born in Traiguen, Chile, Dr. Saez was the second youngest of eight brothers and the only one to leave for a career outside of Chil...

Awarded: C. David Allis, the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The award recognizes Dr. Allis “for the discovery of covalent modifications of histone proteins and their critical roles in the regulation of gene expression and chromatin organization, advancing the understanding of diseases ...

Hironori Funabiki, head of the Laboratory of Chromosome and Cell Biology, has been promoted to professor and granted tenure by the university’s Board of Trustees. Funabiki joined Rockefeller as assistant professor in 2002 and has been associate professor since 2007; his promotion to professor is ...

The 2014 Convocation awarded 23 Ph.Ds to Rockefeller graduate fellows, bringing the total number of Rockefeller alumni to 1,150. The luncheon preceding the ceremony was held for the first time in the new, grandly restored Great Hall of Welch. Following tradition, faculty mentors joined their stud...

by ZACH VEILLEUX In addition to 23 students, three seasoned contributors to basic science — two Nobel Prize winners and a philanthropist — received degrees from Rockefeller this year. In a tradition dating back more than five decades, the university awarded honorary doctorate of science degrees...

by LESLIE CHURCH Given annually, the David Rockefeller Fellowship is intended for an outstanding third-year student who demonstrates exceptional promise as a scientist and a leader. This year, for the first time, the award has been given to two recipients, a decision that is a testament to the hi...

As the graduating class of 2014 moves on to the next stages of life and career, the Rockefeller community welcomes the incoming group of graduate fellows. There were 744 applications received this year, and after careful consideration by the admissions committee, 77 applicants were offered admiss...

Rockefeller University is best known for its innovative research. But the courses it offers, and the teachers who lead them, are no less impressive. Two such faculty members were honored at this year’s Convocation luncheon with Distinguished Teaching Awards: Daniel Mucida, assistant professor and...

Jennifer Jeanne Bussell Presented by Leslie B. Vosshall B.A., University of Chicago Abdominal-B Neurons Control Drosophila Virgin Female Receptivity           I am pleased to present Jennifer Bussell to you today. Jennifer hails from South Carolina, where she graduated from the South Car...

Rohit Chandwani Presented by Alexander Tarakhovsky A.B., Harvard College M.D., Yale University School of Medicine Stochastic Activation of Enhancers in the Innate Immune Response by the Histone Demethylase JMJD2D           Rohit Chandwani joined my lab after completing his M.D. training...

Chiung-Ying Chang Presented by Elaine Fuchs B.S., M.S., National Taiwan University Coordinating Stem Cell Behavior in the Hair Follicle           Chiung-Ying Chang received her bachelor and master of science degrees from National Taiwan University. She joined my laboratory in summer 2009...

Eric Fritz Presented by F. Nina Papavasiliou A.B., Harvard College Genome-wide Characterization of the Effects of Nucleic Acid Modifying Enzymes: Cytidine Deaminases and DNA Methylation           In biology, to show that something happens, what we call a positive result, is easy. To demo...

Paul William Furlow Presented by Sohail Tavazoie B.S., Michigan State University M.S., Northwestern University Mutations in a Mechanosensitive Channel Enable Intravascular Metastatic Cell Survival           Paul infuses a large dose of vitality into all that he does. This is most apparent...

Daniel B. Gilmer Presented by Vincent A. Fischetti B.S., Howard University Studies of a Novel Phage Lytic Enzyme, PlySs2           Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are viruses that infect bacteria. There are about 10 million phages per gram of soil or milliliter of water, so recent e...

Claire Ellen Hamilton Presented by F. Nina Papavasiliou B.S., Yale University Transcriptome-wide Characterization of APOBEC1-catalyzed RNA Editing Events in Macrophages           It is uncommon for a graduate student to work in a brand new area, especially in a branch of biology, such as...

Evan Heller Presented by Elaine Fuchs B.A., Columbia University Forces Generated by Cell Intercalation Tow Epidermal Sheets in Mammalian Tissue Morphogenesis           Evan Heller contacted me shortly after he was accepted to Rockefeller’s Ph.D. Program, and inquired about a possible r...

Jessica Sook Yuin Ho Presented by Alexander Tarakhovsky B.S., University of Wisconsin–Madison Chromatin Control of the Antiviral Response to Influenza           Jessica Ho joined the university as part of the A*STAR program from Singapore. She entered as a “star” and never ceased t...

Matthew Thomas Holt Presented by Tom Muir B.S., Western Washington University Identification of a Functional Hotspot on Ubiquitin Required for Stimulation of Methyltransferase Activity on Chromatin           Matt Holt hails from Seattle and, like many from that part of the world, was lure...

James Letts Presented by Sidney Strickland on behalf of Roderick MacKinnon B.Sc., University of Victoria Functional and Structural Studies of the Human Voltage-gated Proton Channel           I apologize, James, for not being here in person to celebrate this well deserved accomplishment. ...

Jeff Liesch Presented by Leslie B. Vosshall B.S., University of Maryland–College Park The Neuropeptide Regulation of Host-seeking Behavior in Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes           I am pleased to present Jeff Liesch to you today. Jeff came to Rockefeller with impressive research credentia...

María Maldonado Presented by Frederick R. Cross on behalf of Tarun Kapoor member of the graduating class of 2013 B.A., M.Sci., University of Cambridge Examining the Regulation of Cell Division by the Spindle Assembly Checkpoint           When we enter a different country we need valid p...

Christina B. Marney Presented by Robert B. Darnell B.Sc., University of East Anglia RNA Deregulation in Metastatic Breast Cancer           Tina was a top honors, straight A student as an undergrad at the University of East Anglia, which turns out to be just beneath a place called the Twe...

Jacob N. Oppenheim Presented by Marcelo O. Magnasco A.B., Princeton University Charting the Vasculome: High Resolution Maps of the Vasculature of Entire Organs           Richard Feynman said prophetically in 1959, as he heralded both nanotechnology and molecular biophysics, that “there...

Norah Pencheva Presented by Sohail Tavazie B.A., Kenyon College Identification of a MicroRNA Network that Regulates Melanoma Metastasis and Angiogenesis by Targeting ApoE           Nora hails from a tiny town in central Bulgaria. There are two things that she absolutely loves: her nightli...

K. Rashid Rumah Presented by Vincent A. Fischetti B.S. Stanford University The Origin of Multiple Sclerosis Revisited: The Case for a Soluble Toxin             Multiple sclerosis is a devastating neurological disease that attacks people in the prime of their lives. Though intensive res...

Neel Shah Presented by Tom Muir B.S., New York University Split Inteins: From Mechanistic Studies to Novel Protein Engineering Technologies           Neel Shah joined the Rockefeller graduate program in the fall of 2008 following undergraduate studies at NYU where he graduated with top ho...

Frej Tulin Presented by Frederick R. Cross M.S., KTH Royal Institute of Technology Exploration of Cell Cycle-specific Essential Gene Functions in the Microbial Plant Chlamydomonas reinhardtii           My laboratory has worked in the budding yeast model system for some years. Many labs ha...

Siddarth Venkatesh Presented by Paul Bieniasz B. Tech, University of Madras Ph.D. Auburn University Mechanism and Evolutionary Origins of HIV-1 Virion Entrapment by Tetherin           For his thesis project Siddarth Venkatesh worked on a protein, called tetherin, that is expressed in res...

Joseph Gleeson, a neurogeneticist who hunts down genes responsible for devastating neurodevelopmental disorders, has joined The Rockefeller University and has established the Laboratory of Pediatric Brain Diseases. Gleeson, formerly a professor at the University of California, San Diego, is one o...