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Campus News

Tenure awarded to Hiro Funabiki

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...
Campus News

New cryo-EM suite expands Rockefeller’s capabilities in structural biology

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...
Campus News

Playing doctors: Tri-Institutional Music and Medicine Program features physicians and scientists who also perform music

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...
Campus News

Science communicator named new head of Public Affairs

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...
Campus News

Antique vacuum pump finds new home in Pennsylvania

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...
Campus News

130 employees honored for longtime service

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....
Campus News

Trustee Donald Pels dies at 86

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 ...
Campus News

Professor Emeritus Peter Marler, researcher of songbird learning, dies

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 ...
Campus News

Lino Saez, 1954-2014, developed new techniques to study circadian clocks

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...
Campus News

Milestones

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 ...

In the News - Time - Vosshall

Scientists discover why mosquitoes love human blood “ ‘It was a really good evolutionary move,’ said Leslie Vosshall of Rockefeller University in New York, who led the study published in the journal Nature, ‘We provide the ideal lifestyle for mosquitoes. We always have water around for them...
Science News

Research suggests how mosquitoes evolved an attraction to human scent

The female mosquitoes that spread dengue and yellow fever didn’t always rely on human blood to nourish their eggs. Their ancestors fed on furrier animals in the forest. But then, thousands of years ago, some of these bloodsuckers made a smart switch: They began biting humans and hitchhiked all ov...
Awards and Honors

C. David Allis wins the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

For his foundational research on the unexpected regulation of gene activation by modifications to proteins that package DNA, work with implications for many diseases including cancer, Rockefeller’s C. David Allis has been honored with the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Allis, Joy and...

In the News - Forbes - Allis

Winners announced for the world's richest science award   “[Dr.] Allis is considered the father of one of the hottest fields in 21st century science. Called epigenetics, it is the study of a phenomenon that 20th century biology said shouldn’t exist – changes in molecules that are outside the...
Science News

3D deep-imaging advance likely to drive new biological insights

In a significant technical advance, a team of neuroscientists at The Rockefeller University has devised a fast, inexpensive imaging method for probing the molecular intricacies of large biological samples in three dimensions, an achievement that could have far reaching implications in a wide arra...
Science News

Research resolves contradiction over protein’s role at telomeres

Mice and humans share a lot more than immediately meets the eye, and their commonalities include their telomeres, protective ends on chromosomes. But in recent years, the role of one particular protein at telomeres has puzzled scientists. New work at Rockefeller University has solved the contradi...
Awards and Honors

Cori Bargmann awarded 2015 Benjamin Franklin Medal

Rockefeller University’s Cori Bargmann, a neurobiologist who studies the relationships between genes, neural circuits and behavior in roundworms, will receive the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science. The award, announced this week, will be presented in April at The Franklin Institute in ...
Science News

New technique efficiently turns antibodies into highly tuned ‘nanobodies’

Antibodies, in charge of recognizing and homing in on molecular targets, are among the most useful tools in biology and medicine. Nanobodies – antibodies’ tiny cousins – can do the same tasks, for example marking molecules for research or flagging diseased cells for destruction. But, thanks to...

In the News - HuffPostSci - Friedman

The good news and the bad news about beating obesity   "We don't 'pillory people for being very tall or short,' [Jeffrey] Friedman said, so it makes no sense to blame obese people for being that way--or for obese people to feel ashamed."

In the News - ABC - McEwen

Ebola: A crash course in fear and how it hurts us   "Bruce McEwen, a neuroscientist who studies stress at Rockefeller University in New York, said the fear can lead people to change their lifestyle, making them isolate themselves, lose sleep, stop exercising, change their diet for the worse and d...

In The News Q&A Torsten Wiesel

Q&A: Torsten Wiesel  “Torsten Wiesel is president emeritus of Rockefeller University in New York City. He shared half of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with David Hubel for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. He tells Stefano Sandrone about hi...
Science News

One signal means different things to stem cells versus their progeny

Two listeners might hear the same message, but understand it differently and take different actions in response. Something similar happens within the hair follicle: Stem cells and their progeny react quite differently to an important group of signaling proteins. New experiments at Rockefeller Uni...
Science News

Atomic map reveals clues to how cholesterol is made

In spite of its dangerous reputation, cholesterol is in fact an essential component of human cells. Manufactured by the cells themselves, it serves to stiffen the cell’s membrane, helping to shape the cell and protect it. By mapping the structure of a key enzyme involved in cholesterol production...
Science News

Newly discovered brain cells explain a prosocial effect of oxytocin

Oxytocin, the body’s natural love potion, helps couples fall in love, makes mothers bond with their babies, and encourages teams to work together. Now new research at Rockefeller University reveals a mechanism by which this prosocial hormone has its effect on interactions between the sexes, at le...

In the News - McEwen - NewSci

Brave or reckless? Thrill-seekers' brains can tell you   "'It really has to do with the reckless and the brave,' says Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, New York, who wasn't involved with the work. The brave feel fear but are able to overcome it, whereas the reckless seem to have a brain tha...
Awards and Honors

Rockefeller neurobiology lab is awarded first-round BRAIN initiative grant

A proposal to develop a new way to remotely control brain cells from Sarah Stanley, a Research Associate in Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, headed by Jeffrey M. Friedman, is among the first to receive funding from U.S. President Barack Obama’s BRAIN initiative. The pro...
Science News

'Programmable' antibiotic harnesses an enzyme to attack drug-resistant microbes

The multitude of microbes scientists have found populating the human body have good, bad and mostly mysterious implications for our health. But when something goes wrong, we defend ourselves with the undiscriminating brute force of traditional antibiotics, which wipe out everything at once, regar...
Awards and Honors

Rockefeller postdoc Stephen Brohawn named Blavatnik Award regional finalist

Stephen Brohawn, a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University, has been named a Blavatnik Award regional finalist in chemistry by the New York Academy of Sciences. Brohawn is a member of Roderick MacKinnon’s Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics. The Blavatnick Awards were es...
Awards and Honors

Stanford's Lucy Shapiro to receive 2014 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize

The Rockefeller University has announced that Lucy Shapiro, professor of developmental biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, will receive the 2014 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. The annual award, which celebrates the achievements of outstanding women in science, will be presented to ...
Science News

New technique reveals a role for histones in cell division

Proteins known as histones give structure to DNA, which coils around them like string on spools. But as is so often the case in biology, it turns out there is more to these structures than meets the eye. Scientists already know histones play a part in controlling the expression of genes, and more...
Science News

Imaging studies open a window on how effective antibodies are formed

Sometimes, in order to understand what’s happening in the immune system, you just have to watch it. By imaging the immune response, researchers have observed how two types of immune cells, T and B cells, interact with one another during a critical period following infection in order to prepare th...
Campus News

Hironori Funabiki promoted to professor

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 ...

In the News - Washington Post

New ‘cool videos’ from NIH look at Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, MS, coral reefs   "A 'stop heart attack' refrain echoes through Rockefeller University’s 'molecular biomedicine music video' featuring some flashy animation and seriously geeky dancing."
Science News

Research hints at why stress is more devastating for some

Some people take stress in stride; others are done in by it. New research at Rockefeller University has identified the molecular mechanisms of this so-called stress gap in mice with very similar genetic backgrounds — a finding that could lead researchers to better understand the development of ps...
Science News

Discovery reveals how bacteria distinguish harmful versus helpful viruses

When they are not busy attacking us, germs go after each other. But when viruses invade bacteria, it doesn’t always spell disaster for the infected microbes: Sometimes viruses actually carry helpful genes that a bacterium can harness to, say, expand its diet or better attack its own hosts. Scient...
Science News

Research explains how cellular guardians of the gut develop

Even the most careful chosen meal can contain surprises. To defend against infectious microbes, viruses or other potential hazards that find their way to the intestines, a dedicated contingent of immune cells keeps watch within the thin layer of tissue that divides the contents of the gut from th...
Science News

Antibodies, together with viral ‘inducers,’ found to control HIV in mice

Although HIV can now be effectively suppressed using anti-retroviral drugs, it still comes surging back the moment the flow of drugs is stopped. Latent reservoirs of HIV-infected cells, invisible to the body’s immune system and unreachable by pharmaceuticals, ensure that the infection will reboun...
Campus News

Convocation 2014

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...
Campus News

Honorary degrees awarded to Gurdon, Robertson and Yamanaka

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...
Campus News

David Rockefeller Fellowship awarded to two neuroscientist third-years

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...
Campus News

Coming soon, to The David Rockefeller Program

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...
Campus News

Mucida, Smogorzewska honored with teaching awards

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...
Campus News

Jennifer Jeanne Bussell

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...
Campus News

Rohit Chandwani

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...
Campus News

Chiung-Ying Chang

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...
Campus News

Eric Fritz

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...
Campus News

Paul William Furlow

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...
Campus News

Daniel B. Gilmer

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...
Campus News

Claire Ellen Hamilton

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...
Campus News

Evan Heller

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...
Campus News

Jessica Sook Yuin Ho

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...
Campus News

Matthew Thomas Holt

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...
Campus News

James Letts

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. ...
Campus News

Jeff Liesch

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...
Campus News

María Maldonado

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...
Campus News

Christina B. Marney

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...
Campus News

Jacob N. Oppenheim

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...
Campus News

Nora Pencheva

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...
Campus News

K. Rashid Rumah

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...
Campus News

Neel Shah

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...
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