Profiles
Angelika Amon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Angelika Amon was Professor of Biology and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She passed away on October 29th, 2020 after a battle with ovarian cancer. Amon received her B.S. and PhD from the University of Vienna. Her work focused mainly on yeast genetics, having led to major discoveries on cell cycles and was a pioneer of research on chromosome imbalance. Amon was the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Nakasone Award, Human Frontier Science Program, 2020, the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Genetics Society of America Medal, 4014, and the 2000 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, HHMI Investigator.
Brenda Andrews University of Toronto
Brenda Andrews CC FRSC is a Professor at the University of Toronto. She received her B.S. in Zoology and PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto and conducted her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on yeast genetics and functional genomics to study cell cycle transcription factor pathways and mechanisms of cell cycle regulation, pioneering the use of SGA for genome analysis. Andrews is the Editor in Chief of G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics by the Genetics Society of America. In 2015 Andrews was appointed as Companion to the Order of Canada for her contributions to systems biology and molecular genetics. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. In 2010 she received the Ira Herskowitz Award and is the recipient of the Premier’s Research Excellence Award.
Kirsten Benjamin Amyris, Inc.
Kirsten Benjamin is the Vice President R&D at Amyris, a science and technology leader in the research, development and production of sustainable ingredients for the health, beauty, flavors and fragrances market. She received her B.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Philosophy from the University of Michigan and her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California Berkeley in 1997. She was a postdoctoral fellow at UC, San Francisco from 1997-2003, a senior research fellow at the Molecular Sciences Institute from 2003-2007 and then began her career at Amyris, first as a scientist, then senior scientist, principal scientist, senior director, senior research fellow, to her current title in 2017. She has experience in industrial biotechnology, with expertise in microbial strain improvement, including synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and multidimensional strain characterization. She is a member of SBE and the International Metabolic Engineering Society (IMES).
Douglas Bishop University of Chicago
Douglas Bishop is Professor of Radiation and Cellular Oncology and Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. in Biology from Amherst College and PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University. He joined the University of Chicago in 1993. His research focuses on two key recombination proteins, Dmc1 and Rad51 that are related to the central bacterial recombination protein, RecA. He has published numerous works contributing to the further understanding of functional specialization of Rad51 and Dmc1.
Kerry Bloom University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kerry Bloom is Thad L. Beyle Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a graduate of Tulane University and received his PhD from Purdue University. His research mainly focuses on mechanisms of chromosome segregation. Bloom pioneered real-time imaging of yeast to quantitate the progression of mitosis and visualize the nucleus and mitotic spindle for the first time in live yeast. He is the recipient of the Career Development award from the National Institutes of Health, 1987-1992 and the 1989 Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement. Bloom is also Co-Director of the Science Writers Fellowship Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Charles Boone University of Toronto
Charlie Boone FRSC, is a Professor at the University of Toronto and Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Molecular Medicine, Canada Research Chair in Proteomics, Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics. He received his BSc in Chemistry and Math from Queen’s University in 1982 and his PhD in Biology from McGill University in 1989. He conducted his postdoctoral work as a Research Fellow at the University of Oregon’s Institute of Molecular Biology. Boone uses the yeast model system to focus his research on developing and applying functional genomics approaches for mapping genetic, chemical-genetic and protein-protein interactions to place all yeast genes on a functional network. He hopes this work will contribute to a wider understanding into the genotype-to-phenotype relationship.
Bonita Brewer University of Washington
Bonita Brewer is a Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on using Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study the regulation of eukaryotic chromosomal DNA replication. Brewer’s research has widely contributed to work related to genetic disorders and the mouse chaos3 cancer phenotypes. She has numerous publications on yeast rDNA.
James Broach Penn State University
James Broach is a Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Pennsylvania State University. He studied Chemistry at Yale University and received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. Broach served as a Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University from 1984 to 2012 and was Associate Director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and CO-Director of the Center for Computational Biology. His research focuses on the stress response of cells using the yeast Saccharomyces as a model system. He previously served as Trustee of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Commissioner on the New Jersey Commission on Cancer research. Broach is a fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an executive committee member of the Cancer Biology Training Consortium and also has patented numerous drug discovery technologies.
Judith Campbell California Institute of Technology
Judith Campbell is a Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the California Institute of Technology. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1965 and her PhD in 1974 from Harvard University. Campbell has been on faculty at Caltech since 1977, holding positions of Associate Professor and then Professor. Her research has focused on structural and molecular cell biology and mechanisms and regulation of DNA replication and repair. Campbells work with DNA replication in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae dynamics in signaling transductions and exploring biological interactions in single cells has widely contributed to the advancement of cancer research.
Frederick Cross The Rockefeller University
Frederick Cross is a Professor of Cell Biology and Genetics and Genomics at The Rockefeller University. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1978 and his PhD in 1984 from The Rockefeller University. He conducted his postdoctoral work at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from 1985 to 1989. His research focuses on the molecular basis of cell cycle control. He has numerous publications on his work and is the 2006 recipient of The Rockefeller University Distinguished Teaching Award.
Ronald Davis Stanford University
Ronald Davis is a Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute and Bio-X. He completed his PhD at the California Institute of Technology and conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, working with Dr. James Watson. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Stanford’s Department of Biochemistry as an Associate Professor then becoming full Professor in 1980. Davis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences-Genetics in 1983. Davis joined the Department of Genetics and became director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center in 1994. His work resulted in the first demonstration of the use of restriction endonucleases for joining DNA fragments. He also contributed to the development of the first DNA microarray for gene expression profiling along with the gene expression profile of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the first complete eukaryotic genome. Davis’ work and research resulted in the contribution to the Human Genome Project. Dr. Davis also serves as the director of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Open Medicine Foundation, whose goal is to fund and initiate research for a cure for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and other chronic complex diseases. He has received numerous recognitions for his work in the field, including the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, Warren Alpert Foundation in 2013, the 2011 Inventor of the Year, SVIPLA, among many other honors and awards. In 2013 Davis was ranked among the top 7 of "Today's Greatest Inventors" by Atlantic Magazine.
Trisha Davis University of Washington
Trisha Davis is Professor and Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. She received her B.A. in Biology and Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Yale University. She joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 1997. Davis is also the director of the Yeast Resource Center. Her research focuses on Calmodulin in budding yeast spindle pole body and mitosis. She was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
David Drubin University of California, Berkeley
David Drubin is the Department Co-Chair and Ernette Comby Chair in Microbiology Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at University of California, Berkeley. He is a graduate of UC, Berkeley and received his PhD from UC San Francisco. In 1988 he became an assistant professor at UC Berkeley. The primary focus of his research is the cytoskeleton and membrane trafficking events in budding yeast and runs a joint lab with Dr. Georgana Barnes. He is especially interested in endocytosis and cell polarity development and the potential experimental advantages. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and is the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Biology of the Cell. In 2016, he was appointed a Senior Fellow to the Allen Institute for Cell Sciences.
Bernard Dujon Institut Pasteur, Paris
Bernard Dujon is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Institut Pasteur, Paris and Sorbonne University. He studied Biology at the Faculté des Sciences de Paris and the Ecole Normale Supérieure where he was at the top of his class. He went on to receive his Master’s degree in Genetics from Pierre and Marie Curie University as well as a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Advanced Genetics and a Doctorate in Natural Sciences. Dujon would also conduct doctoral studies under geneticist Piotr Slonimski at the CNRS while simultaneously serving as a junior scientist and would eventually serve as Research Master from 1970 to 1983. During his time at the CNRS his research related the first rules of mitochondrial inheritance using Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutants. Dujon’s research also widely contributed to discovering the first tools for eukaryotic genome editing. He served as a Professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University from 1983 to 2015 and at Institut Pasteur from 1993 to 2015. Dujon is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Thérèse Lebrasseur Prize from the Fondation de France in 1991 and the 2009 René and Andrée Duquesne Prize. He is a Chevalier of the National Ordre of the Légion d'Honneur and a Chevalier of the Palmes Académiques. Dujon is also a member of Institut de France (Académie des Sciences), Academia Europaea, EMBO and National Academy of Inventors.
Maitreya Dunham University of Washington
Maitreya Dunham is a Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. She received her B.S. of Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her PhD in Genetics from Stanford University. She went on to be a Lewis-Sigler Fellow at Princeton University from 2003 to 2008 and joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 2008. Her research focuses on the relationship between aneuploidy and aging and uses budding yeast as a testbed for technology development. Dunham applies these systems to contribute to the research of the biology of aging.
Stephen Elledge HHMI / Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Stephen Elledge is the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Genetics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research largely focuses on signaling pathways involved in DNA damage especially areas relevant to cancer biology. He uses yeast systems in his studies and also has worked extensively on Cdk regulation including Cdk2, cyclin A, cyclin F, and the p21 family of Cdk inhibitors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the 2002 recipient of the NAS award in Molecular Biology. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and received the 2015 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Elledge is also the 2017 recipient of the Gruber Prize in Genetics.
Scott Emr Cornell University
Scott Emr is the Frank Rhodes Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Director of the Weill Institute at Cornell University. He received his PhD in Molecular Genetics from Harvard University in 1981 and conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He served on the faculty at California Institute of Technology from 1983 to 1991 and also held a position at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Emr’s research focuses on intracellular membrane trafficking. He studies ESCRTs direct function on the lysosome membrane as well as the ESRT complexes role in the budding HIV virus. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. In 2008 he was elected Foreign Member to the European Molecular Biology Organization. Emr is the 2017 recipient of the Keith R. Porter Award “in recognition of outstanding contributions to cell biology” from the American Society for Cell Biology and the 2007 Avanti Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Washington D.C.
R.E. Esposito The University of Chicago
Rochelle Esposito is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and The Committee on Genetics at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Genetics from the University of Washington in 1967 after graduating from Brooklyn College with a B.S. in Biology in 1962. Esposito conducted postdoctoral research on Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin from 1967 to 1968. She has been a member of the University of Chicago faculty since 1969 and her research has primarily focused on genetic mechanisms and meiotic development. Esposito founded the National Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Committee and has formerly served as an officer in multiple roles on the Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Susan Ferro-Novick University of California, San Diego
Susan Ferro-Novick is a Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. She is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley. She served on the faculty of Yale University before joining UC San Diego School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the directionality and specificity of vesicle traffic between the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi is achieved and the role that the GTPase Rab1 plays in these events and in autophagy. In 2012 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1994 to 2016.
Gerald Fink Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Gerald Fink is a Professor of Genetics and Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute For Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He majored in Biology at Amherst College and received his PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Yale University in 1965, focussing his studies on Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Fink conducted his postdoctoral research with Dr. Bruce Ames at the National Institutes of Health before joining the faculty of Cornell University in 1967 where he was a Professor of Biochemistry for 15 years. Fink pioneered the field of yeast Molecular Biology in 1977 with his innovative technique of introducing DNA to living yeast cells, allowing for the advancement of studies on vaccines, drugs and manipulations in complex organisms. His work observing filamentation in yeast displayed the process by which disease-causing fungi switch from a benign to infectious form. He also significantly contributed to establishing Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism for studying plant development. Fink served as the director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001 and formerly held the position of President of the Genetics Society of America as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 2014 to 2017. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences the Institute of Medicine along with being a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fink is a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences/U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular Biology, the first honorary doctorate awarded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the 2001 George W. Beadle Medal by the Genetics Society of America among other recognitions in the field.
Thomas Fox Cornell University
Thomas Fox is a Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University. He received his B.S. from Cornell University in 1971 and his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University in 1976. Fox conducted several years of postdoctoral work at University of Basel in Switzerland eventually holding a faculty position. He joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1981. Fox has taught Genetics and lead a research group that studied the understanding of how expression of genes in mitochondrial DNA is controlled by nuclear genes, and how mitochondrially coded proteins are assembled with nuclearly coded proteins into the respiratory chain complexes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. He received the 2015 Outstanding Accomplishments in Research Award CALS, the 2003 State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching SUNY, and the Louis and Edith Edgerton Career Teaching Award College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2013. He was a 2010 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a 1998 Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology/American Society for Microbiology.
Judith Frydman Stanford University
Judith Frydman is Donald Kennedy Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires and conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Frydman discovered the essential chaperone in TRiC and elucidated its mechanism and function in protein folding. Her work has greatly contributed to the understanding of the genesis of protein aggregation in neurodegeneration. She is the 2017 recipient of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Merck Award. In 2018 she was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a Fellow of the Biophysical Society.
David Garfinkel University of Georgia
David Garfinkel is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia. He received his B.S. in Bacteriology from University of Wisconsin in 1975 and his PhD in Microbiology in 1981 from University of Washington. He conducted his postdoctoral research at MIT-Whitehead Institute and was a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute from 1985 to 2010. In 2010 he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia. Garfinkel’s research focuses on Ty1 retrotransposition in the budding yeast Saccharomyces. His work contributes to multiple areas of research including retroelements in various organisms.
Daniel Gottschling Calico Life Sciences
Daniel Gottchling is Head of Research of Calico Life Sciences, LLC. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Augustana College and his Master’s and PhD from the University of Colorado. He conducted his postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center focusing on ciliate telomeres. He went on to serve on the faculty of the University of Chicago then the University of Washington School of Medicine in the Department of Genome Sciences from 2001 to 2015. His research has resulted in the discovery of new molecules in numerous areas of cell biology. He uses the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study the aging process in eukaryotic cells. In 1995 he received a National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology. In 2011 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Michael Grunstein University of California, Los Angeles
Michael Grunstein is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He received his B.S. from McGill University and his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Grunstein pioneered the colony hybridization screening technique for recombinant DNAs in David Hogness’ laboratory while conducting postdoctoral research at Stanford University. He established a laboratory at UCLA in 1975 where his research resulted in the innovation of the genetic analysis of histones in yeast, revealing for the first time that histones are regulators of gene activity in living cells and in 1995 that non-histone regulatory proteins bind histones to regulate heterochromatin formation. Grunstein’s work resulted in uncovering acetylation of a novel site in yeast. In 2008 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of over 20 honors and awards including the 2018 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 1998-2007 MERIT Award, National Institutes of Health, and the 1979-1984 American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award.
Christine Guthrie University of California, San Francisco
Christine Guthrie is Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. She received her B.S. in Zoology from the University of Michigan and her PhD from University of Wisconsin, studying under Masayasu Nomura. Guthrie joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco in 1973. Her research resulted in the indication that yeast possess small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) involved in splicing pre-messenger RNA into messenger RNA in eukaryotic cells. She pioneered methods to discriminate functional snRNAs from degradation products and also to create widely used intron-containing reporter genes in order to clone and sequence the SNR genes for the yeast snRNAs. In 1993 Guthrie was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and has served as editor for “Guide to Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology”. She is the recipient of the 1997 Genetics Society of America Medal, the WICB Senior Career Recognition Award in 1998, the RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2006), and the 2011 ASBMB-Merck Award.
James Haber Brandeis University
James Haber is the Abraham and Etta Goodman Professor of Biology and Director of Rosentiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University. He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the repair of broken chromosomes through the study of genetics and molecular biology of Saccharomyces. Haber uses real-time monitoring of DNA to examine different mechanisms of repair. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his work in the field. Haber is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the 2011 recipient of the Genetics Society of America Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for lifetime achievement in genetics.
Michael Hall University of Basel
Michael Hall is a Professor and former Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Basel, Biozetrum, Switzerland. He graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976, receiving his B.S. in Zoology. He went on to earn his PhD in Molecular Genetics from Harvard University in 1981. Hall was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pasteur Institute and the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the faculty of University of Basel in 1987. Hall’s research contributed to the discovery of TOR (Target of Rapamycin) and displayed its role as central controller of cell growth. The discovery of TOR has redefined the understanding of cell growth. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization. In 2003 he was awarded the Cloëtta Prize for Biomedical Research. Hall is also the recipient of the 2009 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the 2012 Marcel Benoist Prize for Sciences or Humanities and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2014. In 2019 he was presented with the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for Cancer Research, the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award, and the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, BBVA Foundation.
Philip Hieter University of British Columbia
Philip Hieter is a Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1981 where he was awarded the 1981 Council of Graduate Schools/University Microfilms International Dissertation Prize for his work on light-chain genes. Hieter went on to conduct his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University where he worked with the yeast genome as a model system for researching the genes responsible for regulating the cell-division cycle. He accepted an offer to join the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1985 and would serve as a Professor until 1997. In 1997 Hieter joined the faculty of the University of British Columbia and served as Director of the Michael Smith Laboratories until 2008. His research has primarily focused on the molecular components required for chromosome transmission in yeast in hopes of relating his findings to human cancer. His work has widely contributed to the field of study by establishing an extensive genome instability gene catalog to identify genes that could cause chromosome instability (CIN) in cancer. In 2012 Hieter served as President of the Genetics Society of America. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Gairdner Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Sciences. Hieter is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2018 he received the George W. Beadle Award for his outstanding contributions to the community of genetic researchers.
Alan Hinnebusch Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Alan Hinnebusch is a NIH Distinguished Investigator in the Section on Nutrient Control of Gene Expression. He received his B.S. in Biology for the University of Dayton, Ohio in 1975 and his PhD in Biochemistry in 1980 from Harvard University. He conducted his postdoctoral work studying yeast genetics with Gerald R. Fink at Cornell University then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1980 to 1983. In 1983 he joined the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland as an independent investigator. Hinnebusch’s work focuses largely on mechanisms controlling gene expression at the translational and transcriptional levels. He is regarded for his contributions to the greater understanding of a dual regulatory response to nutrient starvation and stress involving the phosphorylation of translation initiation factor 2 using budding yeast as a model system. In 1994 he was named Maryland's Outstanding Young Scientist. From 2000 to 2010 he was the co-organizer of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting on Translational Control. He was named Head of the Program in Cellular Regulation and Metabolism in 2007. Hinnebusch is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. His work has resulted in over 220 published articles on his research in the field.
Mark Hochstrasser Yale University
Mark Hochstrasser is Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. He received his B.A. from Rutgers University and his PhD from the University of California, San Francisco in 1987. Hochstrasser then conducted his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of Yale University in 2000. His research focuses on eukaryotic cell biology and conducts a majority of his Lab’s work using baker’s yeast. His work has resulted in multiple discoveries and widely contributed to research on the ubiquitin-proteasome system and the small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) protein. Hochstasser holds two patents related to his work and has been widely published in journals in his field. He is a recipient of the Young Investigator Award from the Cancer Research Foundation and holds the designation of Searle Scholar and Fletcher Scholar. He is a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Microbiology.
Anita Hopper Ohio State University
Anita Hopper is a Professor of Molecular Genetics at Ohio State University. Her research focuses on intracellular distribution of RNA and proteins between nucleus and cytoplasm using yeast (S. cerevisiae) as a model. Hopper’s work contributed to the discovery that tRNAs move retrograde from the cytoplasm to the nucleus and accumulate there under particular stress conditions and was first to demonstrate that a single gene can encode proteins that are delivered to multiple places within the cell. She is a member of the RNA Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Alexander Johnson University of California, San Francisco
Alexander Johnson is a Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He received his B.A. in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University in 1974 and his PhD from Harvard University, working with Mark Ptashne. In 1981 he began his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco where he would begin his work on gene regulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. He went on to join the faculty of UC San Francisco in 1985. His research focuses on gene regulation and cell biology in Candida albicans. Johnson’s work contributed to the discovery of a sexual mating cycle and characterized the genetic switch between the two C. albicans forms. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mark Johnston University of Colorado
Mark Johnston is Professor Emeritus and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980. His research focuses on glucose sensing and signaling. Johnston’s work with yeast has contributed to tracing glucose signals from the cell surface to the nucleus and the understanding of how novel signal transduction pathways work.
Scott Keeney HHMI / Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Scott Keeney is a Member of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech and his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California Berkeley in 1993. Keeney conducted his postdoctoral work in Biochemistry at Harvard University. He joined the faculty of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Molecular Biology Program in 1997. His research focuses on meiotic recombination in the yeast S. cerevisiae and his work has resulted in the discovery of Spo11 as the protein that makes the DNA double-strand breaks that initiate recombination. In 2008 he became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Keeney is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Morten C. Kielland-Brandt Technical University of Denmark
Morten Kielland-Brandt is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Technical University of Denmark. He received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen. He research uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model for numerous studies of applied Microbiology and Biotechnologies.
Sue Klapholz Impossible Foods
Sue Klapholz, M.D., Ph.D, is VP of Nutrition and Health at Impossible Foods. She is also on the board of directors at Lyrical Foods. In 2013, she was a senior scientist at Cell Genesys, where she established a large DNA cloning lab and led the team that cloned the megabase-sized human immunoglobulin genes in yeast, among other projects. Sue also taught a professional course in cloning and analysis of large DNA molecules at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and was a lecturer on genetics and evolution at The University of Chicago. She was a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at The University of California, San Francisco. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University, where she worked on cloning a gene responsible for manic-depression, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at The University of Chicago, focusing on the genetic control of recombination and chromosome segregation during meiosis in yeast. She has an M.D. from The University of Illinois College of Medicine and a Ph.D. in genetics from The University of Chicago. Sue holds five patents and brings a wealth of experience from her diverse career as a scientist, doctor, teacher, editor and writer.
Nancy Kleckner Harvard University
Nancy Kleckner is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology at Harvard University. She graduated from Harvard University in 1968 and received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Princeton University and then joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1977. Her research focuses on using yeast chromosomes to elucidate meiosis. She is the 1990 recipient of the Genetics Society of America Medal and the 2016 recipient of the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for lifetime achievement in the field of genetics. Kleckner is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology.
Richard Kolodner University of California, San Diego
Richard Kolodner is a Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Deigo School of Medicine. He earned his undergraduate degree and PhD from the UC Irvine. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School where he studied DNA replication. After joining the faculty Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 1978 and establishing his own laboratory, he focused his research on DNA recombination. He became chair of the Charles A. Dana Division of Human Cancer Genetics in 1995. He joined the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, San Diego Branch in 1997. He has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of genetic recombination, DNA mismatch repair and the pathways that prevent genome instability. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000. He has also been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is a past recipient of the Charles S. Mott Prize for Outstanding Research in Cancer Causation or Prevention, awarded by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation and the Kirk A. Landon-AACR Prize in Basic Cancer Research.
Douglas Koshland UC Berkeley
Douglas Koshland is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Chair in the Biological Sciences and Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Harvard University and his PhD in Microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Koshland conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Francisco. Koshland joined the staff of Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1987 and joined the faculty of UC Berkeley in 2009. He uses budding yeast to study fundamental processes in cell biology to develop novel genetic reagents and cell biological methods to analyze these complex processes in vivo, coupled with the development and exploitation of in vitro assays to reveal underlying molecular mechanisms. His research has widely contributed to the higher order of chromosome structure, the maintenance of genome integrity, and stress tolerance. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Koshland is the 1991 recipient of the Beckman Young Investigators Award.
Sujsan Liebman University of Nevada
Susan Liebman is a Research Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Nevada, Reno. She received her B.A. in Biophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her M.S. in Biophysics from Harvard Medical School. Liebman earned her Phd in Radiation biology and Biophysics from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center. In 1978 she joined the faculty of the University of Illinois, Chicago as a Professor of Biological Sciences and remains Distinguished Professor Emeritus. She then went on to join the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno in 2011. Her research focuses on yeast prions to elucidate the factors that influence prion appearance and inheritance and to identify new prions. This work contributes to study of the genesis and toxicity of human prion-like disease aggregates. She has over 100 publications in her field of study.
Edward Louis University of Leicester
Ed Louis is a Professor of Genetics and Director of the Centre For Genetic Architecture of Complex Traits at the University of Leicester. He studied Biology and Mathematics at Clarkson University and received his PhD in Genetics from the University of California Berkeley. He began his postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University before moving to the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow where he studied telomeres and genome stability using yeast. He would remain at Oxford as a Lecturer in Biochemistry from 1998 to 2000. In 2000 he joined the faculty of the University of Leicester as a Professor of Genetics, leaving to teach Genome Dynamics at the University of Nottingham in 2005 before returning to Leicester in 2013. His research revolves around genetic variation and genome stability in yeast with a particular interest in the ends of the chromosomes or subtelomeres. Louis’ work has widely contributed to the field of study and furthered understanding of reproductive isolation and speciation in yeast, chromosome evolution in yeast and genome stability in various mutant backgrounds.
Hiten Madhani University of California, San Francisco
Hiten Madhani is a Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his B.S./M.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in 1986 and his Phd in Genetics and MD from University of California, San Francisco. He conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute from 1995 to 1999. In 1999 he joined the faculty of UC San Francisco. Madhani uses yeast as a model to study the two conserved forms of heterochromatin (H3K9me and H3K27me), DNA methylation (5mC), and RNAi. His research on gene silencing mechanisms has advanced the work on human diseases. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and from 2000 to 2005 he was a part of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellowship. Madhani is the recipient of the Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award and the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society Scholar Award.
Edward Marcotte University of Texas at Austin
Edward Marcotte is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. He received his B.S. and PhD from UT Austin. He conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2001, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas, Austin. Marcotte’s research focuses on bioinformatics, proteomics, systems biology, and synthetic biology. His work led to the discovery of a number of features of genomes that allow the prediction of functions for proteins that have never been experimentally characterized. Using techniques and information from over 30 fully sequenced genomes, Marcotte calculated some of the first genome-wide predictions of protein function, finding very preliminary function for over half the 2,500 uncharacterized genes of yeast. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2008, he received the Edith and Peter O`Donnell Award in Science and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award in 2001.
Danesh Moazed Harvard Medical School / HHMI
Danesh Moazed is a Professor of the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz working on the structure and function of ribosomal RNA. He conducted his postdoctoral research at UCSC and joined the faculty of the Harvard Medical School in 1998. In 2008 he became an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Moazed studies epigenetic inheritance mechanisms and their regulation by histone posttranslational modifications, nuclear RNAi, noncoding RNAs, and specific DNA sequences. His research resulted in unveiling the mechanism of the RNAi-mediated heterochromatin establishment. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
Kim Nasmyth University of Oxford
Kim Nasmyth is the Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, former scientific director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, and former head of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. He earned his PhD in Zoology from the University of Edinburgh. He conducted his postdoctoral research in Ben Hall's laboratory in Seattle, Washington. He spent one year at Cold spring Harbor Laboratories as a Robertson Fellow. Nasmyth is one of the discoverers of cohesin, protein complex which during cell division is crucial for faithful chromosome segregation. Professor Nasmyth is a fellow of the Royal Society and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received many scientific honours, including the Max Perutz Prize, the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Wittgenstein Prize and the Unilever Science Prize. In 2018, he received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Maynard Olson University of Washington
Maynard Olson is a Professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington. He received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from California Institute of Technology and Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1970. He served on the faculty of Dartmouth College from 1970 to 1975. Olson then shifted his field of research to Molecular Genetics at Washington University in St Louis and then the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a pioneer of genomic research and his research led to the construction of a detailed physical map of the yeast genome in 1979. He developed yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) that allowed for the study of large portions of the human genome and proved invaluable in the tracking of disease-related genes, and he introduced STS-content mapping which led to the first physical maps of whole human chromosomes. In the 1980s, Olsen helped to organize several genome meetings at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. His research focuses on new methods of genome analysis and the application of these methods to the study of the human and other genomes. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he received the Genetics Society of America Medal. He is also the recipient of the City of Medicine Award and the Gairdner Foundation International Award for his scientific contributions to the Human Genome Project.
Thomas Petes Duke University
Thomas Petes is Minnie Geller Distinguished Professor of Research in Genetics, in the School of Medicine at Duke University. He received his PhD from University of Washington in 1973. His lab focuses on the mechanism of mitotic recombination, the genetic regulation of genome stability, and genetic instability associated with interstitial telomeric sequences primarily using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for his studies. His research resulted in the first genome-wide map of UV-induced recombination events and demonstrated that most spontaneous mitotic recombination events reflect the repair of two sister-chromatids broken at the same position. Petes’ is the 2013 recipient of the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal from the Genetics Society of America and a 2005 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ludmila Pollock Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Ludmila (Mila) Pollock is the Executive Director of the Library & Archives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). She has led the Library & Archives since 1999, as well as the Genentech Center since 2006. The CSHL Library is a state-of-the-art library whose mission is to serve the research needs of the international scientific community at CSHL. The CSHL Archives is internationally recognized for building and promoting extensive collections of original documents pertaining to the history of molecular biology and genetics. Under Mila Pollock's leadership, the CSHL Library & Archives has been awarded more than $2 million in grant support. Mila has conceived and spearheaded numerous special projects, including the acclaimed CSHL Oral History Project: “Talking Science” (http://oralhistory.cshl.edu), for which she interviewed more than 200 prominent international scientists in molecular biology, genetics, and biotechnology. Mila initiated the History of Science series of international meetings at CSHL, each of which is focused on the origins and development, as well as, current research in a specific field in life sciences. She follows her mission to preserve and distribute knowledge of the history and future of science and medicine through national and international talks, special projects, and exhibitions.
John Pringle Stanford University of School of Medicine
John Pringle is a Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. He received both his A.B. in Mathematics and PhD in Biology from Harvard University. He conducted his postdoctoral work at University of Washington and then in Zurich. In 1975 he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor and then Stanford University in 2005. His research has focused on the importance of using protease inhibitors and the advantages of boiling samples to be used for SDS-gel electrophoresis. Pringle’s work is driven by the mission of saving the world’s coral reefs.
Rodney Rothstein Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Rodney Rothstein is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and Development at the Columbia University Medical Center. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1969 and his PhD in Genetics in 1975. He conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of Rochester and Cornell University. Rothstein joined the faculty of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1979 and then went on to join the faculty of the Columbia University Medical Center in 1984. His research uses yeast as a model system to study genome stability, DNA repair and recombination. Rothstein’s work has vastly contributed to the study of DNA double-strand break repair and the development of methods to edit genomes and he is a pioneer in the use of recombination to alter genomes and has employed these methods to isolate novel genes involved in the maintenance of genome stability. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the 2009 Novitski prize from the Genetics Society of America. In 2012, he was appointed Doctor Honoris Causa in Medicine from Umeå University, Sweden. Rothstein is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Society for Microbiology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Randy Schekman University of California, Berkeley
Randy Schekman is a Howard Hughes Institute Investigator and Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He studied at University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1975. He conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego and joined the faculty at the University of California in Berkeley in 1976. He has been a Howard Hughes Institute Investigator since 1991. His research focuses on molecular descriptions of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic in yeast. His work contributed to the discovery of cellular membrane trafficking. He holds many awards and honors for his contributions to his field of study. In 2013, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells". He is the 2002 recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University. He was awarded the Shechtman International Leadership Award in 2014 and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2017. Schekman is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society.
Nava Segev University of Illinois at Chicago
Nava Segev is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD from Tel Aviv University and conducted her postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on trafficking inside cells which contributes to the wider understanding of every aspect of the human body. Segev uses yeast as a model because of its sophisticated genetic, molecular and cellular intricacies. Her research has resulted in multiple publications including “Trafficking Inside Cells: Pathways, Mechanisms and Regulation”.
Giora Simchen The Hebrew University
Giora Simchen is a Professor of Genetics at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science at The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. His research focuses on molecular genetics in yeast: meiosis, cell cycle, chromosome pairing, segregation and recombination in meiosis. Simchen’s work has significantly contributed to the further understanding of the timing of new cell mutations and their association with recombination. He is the 2013 recipient of the EMET Prize.
Michael Snyder Stanford University
Michael Snyder is the Chair, Dept. of Genetics and Director, Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He was a faculty member in the department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University prior to his career at Stanford. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and currently carries out a variety of projects in the areas of genomics and proteomics both in yeast and humans. His laboratory also built the first proteome chip for any organism and the first high resolution tiling array for the entire human genome.
Tim Stearns Stanford University
Timothy Stearns is the Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor, Senior Associate Vice Provost of Research and Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. He received his B.S. in Genetics from Cornell University and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. Stearns’ work centers on the mechanism and regulation of cell division, the organization of signaling pathways within cells, and cell biology of fungal pathogens. In 2002, he was named a HHMI Professor for his work in science education. Stearns has lectured on Yeast Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and led numerous workshops around the world. He is the chair of the NCSD Study Section at the NIH and is a member of JASON, a national organization that advises the government on matters of science. Stearns is also an affiliated faculty member of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and has been an advisor to the National Academies of Science and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Bruce Stillman Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Bruce Stillman is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. A native of Australia, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree with honors at The University of Sydney and a Ph.D. from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. He then moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 1979 and has been at the Laboratory ever since, being promoted to the scientific staff in 1981. Dr. Stillman was Director of the Cancer Center at Cold Spring Harbor from 1992 to 2016. In 1994, he succeeded Nobel Laureate Dr. James D. Watson as Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and was appointed President in 2003. He is an elected fellow of The Royal Society, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Stillman holds numerous awards and honors. He is the recipient of the Society of Surgical Oncology – American Cancer Society Basic Science Award and Lecture and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. In 2019, he received the Canada Gairdner International Award and the Heineken Prize in 2020.
Kevin Struhl Harvard Medical School
Kevin Struhl is the David Wesley Gaiser Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research uses yeast as a model to study transcriptional regulatory mechanisms in living cells. His work has contributed to the advancement of human cancer research and led to numerous publications in his field of study.
Jeremy Thorner University of California, Berkeley
Jeremy Thorner is Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his A.B. in 1967 and PhD in 1972 from Harvard University. He was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford University School of Medicine from 1972 to 1974. Thorner joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 and held the William V. Power Chair in Biology from 1991 to 2011. His research has focused on using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model eukaryote to examine transmembrane and intracellular transduction mechanisms and vastly contributed to the understanding of the biological processes of multicellular organisms and humans. Thorner is the recipient of a ten-year MERIT Award (1989-1998) from NIGMS and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Research Mentoring of Undergraduates in the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley in 2004. In 2014 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award, Yeast Genetics Meeting of the Genetics Society of America and in 2019 was awarded the Herbert Tabor Research Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
Benjamin Tu University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Benjamin Tu is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He received his A.B. and A.M. from Harvard University in 1998 and his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from University of California, San Francisco in 2003. He conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at UT Southwestern. His Lab studies the mechanisms by which cellular processes are coupled to metabolic state.
Bik Tye Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Bik K. Tye is a visiting Professor at the HKUST and Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1969, her M.Sc. from University of California, San Francisco in 1971 and her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. She conducted her postdoctoral work at Stanford University where her research contributed to the discovery of short Okazaki fragments generated during aberrant DNA repair in E.coli. In 1977 she started her lab at Cornell University. Her work with eukaryotic DNA replication led to the discovery of the minichromosome maintenance (MCM) genes which encode the catalytic core of the eukaryotic replisome. At HKUST, she established the DNA Replication Group with a research focus on the high resolution structures of DNA replication complexes in yeast. She has numerous publications on her work in her field of study.
Patrick Westfall Zymergen, Inc.
Patrick Westfall is Senior Director of R&D at Zymergen, where he leads a group focused on rapid prototyping of new microbial production hosts for agriculture and industrial applications. He completed his PhD in Botany from the University of Georgia in 2001. After post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley he joined Amyris Biotechnologies in 2006. While at Amyris, he was a lead scientist for the development a microbial production platform for the anti-malarial compound, Artemisinin. In 2012 Patrick joined Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva) as a group leader for R&D in the Advanced Technology Development group focused on enabling targeted genome editing for agricultural row crops.
Reed Wickner National Institutes of Health
Reed Wickner is a Distinguished Investigator at the National Institutes of Health. He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.D. from Georgetown University. Wickner discovered two infectious proteins (prions) of the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. His work has resulted in the definition of chromosomal genes affecting RNA virus replication. His research focuses on the mechanisms of prion generation and propagation using the [URE3], [PSI] and [PIN] prions of the Ure2, Sup35 and Rnq1 proteins of yeast. Wickner is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, and has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fred Winston Harvard Medical School
Fred Winston is the John Emory Andrus Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He received his B.A. in Biology from the University of Chicago in 1974 and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He conducted his postdoctoral work at Cornell University and the Whitehead Institute. He joined the faculty in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School in 1983. His research focuses on mechanisms of eukaryotic transcription and the regulation of chromatin structure in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In 2009 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. In 2009, he served as the President of the Genetics Society of America.
Kenneth Wolfe University College Dublin
Ken Wolfe FRS is Professor of Genomic Evolution at the Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his B.A. and PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. He conducted his postdoctoral research at Indiana University Bloomington. In 1992 he joined the faculty of Trinity College, Dublin and then in 2013 he joined the faculty of University College, Dublin. His research focuses on the evolution of eukaryotic genomes and chromosome organisation. His work resulted in the discovery that the genome of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae underwent complete genome duplication about 100 million years ago. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Wolfe is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and served as the President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in 2011.
Virginia Zakian Princeton University
Virginia Zakian is the Harry C. Wiess Professor in the Life Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She received her B.S. in Biology from Cornell University and PhD in Biology from Yale University. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in 1995. Her research focuses on telomere biology and replication fork progression. Zakian’s work led to the discovery of telomere position effect, the epigenetic silencing of genes near yeast telomeres. She is a champion of expanding the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in science. She is a fellow at the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.