Skip to main content

Rockefeller University

News & Highlights > News
Campus News

The new river campus is about to arrive—section by section

by Wynne Parry, science writer It’s no ordinary construction project. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation–David Rockefeller River Campus will extend the university’s grounds some 90 feet toward the East River, creating two new acres of land out of thin air. The steel skeleton that will mak...
Campus News

Awards, arrivals, and promotions

Congratulations to our latest award winners: David Allis has won the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize. The prize is given by The Gruber Foundation of Yale University and honors scientists whose work inspires fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture. Allis shares the award with Michael Grunstein of U...
Campus News

Rockefeller scientists in the news

by Katherine Fenz, media relations manager Breakthrough human embryo research A revolutionary method to study early human embryo development developed in Ali Brivanlou’s laboratory received widespread media coverage this month. The study was the first to successfully culture human embryos for...
Science News

Scientists find evidence that cancer can arise from changes in the proteins that package DNA

A mutation that affects the proteins that package DNA—without changing the DNA itself—can cause a rare form of cancer, according to new findings in this week’s Science from researchers at Rockefeller University. The mutation is present in histones, the protein scaffolding around which DNA w...
Awards and Honors

C. David Allis receives the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize

C. David Allis, Joy and Jack Fishman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, has won the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize. He shares the $500,000 award with Michael Grunstein of the University of California, Los Angeles. The award, given by The Gruber Foundation, reco...
Awards and Honors

Torsten Wiesel wins Karolinska Institute’s Jubilee Gold Medal

Torsten Wiesel, President Emeritus and Vincent and Brooke Astor Professor Emeritus, will receive the Karolinska Institute’s Jubilee Gold Medal in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Sweden’s scientific community and to the medical university itself. Wiesel shares the award with Rune ...
Campus News

The Global Corporate Challenge at Rockefeller: 100 days around the world

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor This spring, several hundred Rockefeller faculty and staff members will embark on a competitive, virtual walking tour of the world. The group, which will be divided into teams and motivated to find the longest walking routes across campus and around the cit...
Science News

Antibody therapy opens door to potential new treatment for HIV

The development of antiretroviral therapy, a combination of drugs that slows the replication of HIV in the body, has transformed the treatment of this infection. What was once a certain death sentence is now a chronic condition that people can live with for decades. But this therapy has drawbacks...
Campus News

Richard P. Lifton named 11th president of The Rockefeller University

The Rockefeller University today announced that its Board of Trustees has elected Richard P. Lifton to be the 11th president of the university, effective September 1, 2016. Lifton, 62, Sterling Professor of Genetics and chair of the department of genetics at Yale University, will succeed Marc Tes...
Science News

Researchers use new CRISPR-based strategy to replicate disease in cells

To explore in detail how specific genetic errors can lead to disease, scientists need to perform experiments in cells that carry these exact mutations. Now, the ability to create these cellular replicas using new genome editing technology has been facilitated thanks to work by Rockefeller Univers...
Science News

A central clock runs the cell division cycle

Each time a cell divides, it replicates its DNA once, then separates the two copies from each other and splits into two daughter cells. The event is intricately coordinated and was long known to be under the influence of cyclins—an aptly named group of proteins whose levels go up and down as the ...
Science News

New method allows first look at key stage of human development, embryo implantation

Accompanying commentary recommends revisiting current bioethical guidelines in light of advance       Despite significant biomedical advances in recent decades, the very earliest events of human development­—those that occur during a critical window just after fertilization—h...

In the News - Wall Street Journal - Brivanlou

Scientists Grow Embryos for Up to 13 Days Outside the Uterus   "In addition, to both teams’ surprise, the embryos outside the womb were able to 'self-organize' or begin to set in motion early development of key body organs without any biological cues from the mother. 'That is counterintuitive to ...
Awards and Honors

Nathaniel Heintz and Stanislas Leibler elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Nathaniel Heintz, James and Marilyn Simons Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Stanislas Leibler, Gladys T. Perkin Professor and head of the Laboratory of Living Matter, have been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. They are among 84 new national and 21 ne...
Awards and Honors

Charles Rice wins Belgium’s highest scientific prize

Charles M. Rice, Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology and head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease, has been honored with the 2016 InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize for his work on the hepatitis C virus. Queen Mathilde of Belgium presented Rice with the prize...
Science News

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug reverses genetic changes thought to spur the disease

Aging takes its toll on the brain, and the cells of the hippocampus—a brain region with circuitry crucial to learning and memory—are particularly vulnerable to changes that can lead to Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive decline. With the hope of counteracting the changes that can lead to these t...

In the News - Stat - Tessier-Lavigne

Scientists solve CRISPR's 'Energizer Bunny' problem   "'It works beautifully,' Tessier-Lavigne said. With standard CRISPR-Cas9, 6 percent to 35 percent of the edits were clean, without random insertions and deletions due to Cas9’s repeated cuts, but with their upgrade, the percentage of clean e...

In the News - The New Yorker - Allis

Same but Different: How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture "Allis walked me to his lab, a fluorescent-lit space overlooking the East River, divided by wide, polished-stone benches. A mechanical stirrer, whirring in a corner, clinked on the edge of a glass beaker. 'Two featur...
Campus News

Work begins to redesign Rockefeller’s website

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor and Zach Veilleux, director of publications & editor-in-chief The last time Rockefeller’s website was rebuilt, mobile phones had hinges and Netflix sent movies only on disks. Broadband was still a novelty and Myspace was on the rise. That was in 2004, an...
Campus News

Awards, arrivals, and promotions

Congratulations to our latest award winners: Paul Cohen has won a Young Investigator Award together with two of his collaborators. The prize is given by the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization to recognize projects under the theme of “complex mechanisms in living organisms...
Campus News

New tools from IT aim to help users track device inventory and plan updates

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor Information Technology has unveiled two new tools—an inventory dashboard and a support matrix—to help users plan operating system upgrades and keep track of their computers and mobile devices. The tools are part of a larger initiative designed to help R...
Campus News

Drug discovery institute seeks proposals for innovative antibody projects

by Julie Grisham, freelance writer The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (Tri-I TDI) has reached a new milestone in its effort to advance the development of new drugs based on basic science discoveries made at Rockefeller and its two neighboring institutions, Weill Cornell M...
Science News

Mice engineered with rare kidney disease provide new insights about how cells repair broken DNA

Like jewels in a vault, our precious genetic material is stored in the nucleus of a cell—sequestered away from potentially damaging cellular components and toxins so that no harm can come to it. Yet over the course of a life moving through this world, our DNA does get damaged, and our cells have ...
Science News

A common brain cell shapes the nervous system in unexpected ways

More than half of our brains are made up of glial cells, which wrap around nerve fibers and insulate them—similarly to how the plastic casing of an electric cable insulates the copper wire within—allowing electrical and chemical impulses to travel faster. In the past, neuroscientists considered ...
Science News

A newly discovered way for cells to die

Some cells are meant to live, and some are meant to die. The linker cell of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm that is a favored model organism for biologists, is among those destined for termination. This cell helps determine the shape of the gonad in male worms—and then it dies, after two days...
Campus News

Global ranking places Rockefeller ahead of 1,300 universities in two key measures of scientific impact

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor A comparison of more than 1,300 universities worldwide has found that Rockefeller University ranks first place in two key categories that measure the impact of its research and the transfer of knowledge to the private sector. The results, which were release...
Campus News

Evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll wins Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor “How many true books about science include a coded message from occupied Hungary, written in invisible starch solution on the inside of a record album to be revealed by exposure to iodine?” Jesse Ausubel, who chairs the selection committee for Rockefel...
Awards and Honors

Global ranking places Rockefeller ahead of 1,300 universities in two key measures of scientific impact

A comparison of more than 1,300 universities worldwide has found that Rockefeller University ranks first place in two key categories that measure the impact of its research and the transfer of knowledge to the private sector. The results, which were released April 4 by the European Commission–fun...
Science News

Sweet tooth? Flies have it too—and new research explains how they know what to eat and when to stop

All animals, including humans, love sweet food. But if you’re someone who never turns down dessert under normal circumstances, try wolfing down six donuts as a scientific experiment. Even the moistest, most velvety piece of chocolate cake will seem a lot less appetizing—and you will likely eat l...

In the News - New York Times - Vosshall

Mapping a Genetic Strategy to Fight the Zika Virus "Aware of the new technology, Dr. Vosshall floated the idea of a new Aedes map on Twitter: 'The Aedes aegypti mosquito is infecting millions with #Zika and #Dengue,' she wrote on Jan. 28, 'but we still haven’t put all the pieces of its genome tog...
View
Previous
Next
View
Previous
Next