Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology receives new $10 million grant
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor A new $10 million endowment gift made by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust will provide ongoing support for the university’s chemical and structural biologists through the Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology. Mr. Pels, who was a Roc...
Rockefeller’s annual Celebrating Science benefit raises $2.8 million, an all-time record
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor Last month, 400 guests gathered on campus for cocktails, a lecture on next-generation genomics given by Robert B. Darnell, and a festive dinner. The event—Rockefeller’s fifth annual Celebrating Science benefit—raised a record $2.8 million for the uni...
Molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler receives Rockefeller’s Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor For hundreds of years, bacteria were thought of as reclusive, antisocial organisms. But molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler, known to some as the “Bacteria Whisperer,” discovered that these single-celled creatures actually talk to one another and c...
Neuroscientist Huda Y. Zoghbi is elected to the Board
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor Huda Y. Zoghbi, a pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who has made key discoveries in the study of brain disorders, has been elected to Rockefeller’s Board of Trustees. With her election, which took place at the Board’s October 19 meeting, the univ...
Rockefeller’s Science Outreach program explores the microbes in food
If you’ve ever forgotten about a cheese wedge in the fridge, you may have discovered something mysterious growing on it, a sure sign that it’s no longer edible. But have you ever wondered where the microbes responsible for that change came from? That’s one of several questions that the late...
Gaby Maimon, who studies sophisticated brain functions in fruit flies, is promoted to associate professor
Neuroscientist Gaby Maimon, who heads the Laboratory of Integrative Brain Function, will become an associate professor as of January 1, 2017. His research program explores how the brain performs calculations to estimate values like angles and time, and is based on the idea that fruit flies, his rese...
Awards, Arrivals, and Promotions
Congratulations to our latest award winners: Winrich Freiwald has won the 2016 W. Alden Spencer Award. The prize, given by Columbia University, recognizes outstanding contributions in neuroscience. Dr. Freiwald, who shares the prize with his long-time collaborator Doris Y. Tsao of Caltech, presente...
Pioneering drug discovery company Bridge Medicines launched to advance promising early technologies in major academic institutions through human proof of concept
The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute, a partnership between Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine and Takeda, joins with Deerfield Management and Bay City Capital to create an accelerated path to innovative therapies to treat dis...
Child and Family Center expansion to 15 classrooms is complete
The Rockefeller University Child and Family Center has grown. The recently completed expansion project, which included the construction of five new classrooms on the second floor of the Graduate Students Residence, has doubled the number of infant spots available in the child care program and ad...
Thinking like a scientist: Research assistants at Rockefeller
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor As an undergraduate, Raquel Hernandez-Solis knew she wanted to pursue a graduate degree in the biosciences. She assumed she would follow the trajectory of many of her peers: apply to schools in her senior year and begin a Ph.D. program right upon graduation...