56 Notable alumni of
Rockefeller University
Updated:
Rockefeller University is 937th in the world, 344th in North America, and 322nd in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 56 notable alumni from Rockefeller University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 19 individuals affiliated with Rockefeller University won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine.
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Karl Landsteiner
- Occupations
- immunologistphysicianhematologistresearcherpathologist
- Biography
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Karl Landsteiner ForMemRS was an Austrian-American biologist, physician, and immunologist. He emigrated with his family to New York in 1923 at the age of 55 for professional opportunities, working for the Rockefeller Institute.
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Ōsumi Yoshinori
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- Studied in 1974-1977
- Occupations
- biologist
- Biography
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Yoshinori Ohsumi is a Japanese cell biologist specializing in autophagy, the process that cells use to destroy and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi is a professor at Institute of Science Tokyo's Institute of Innovative Research. He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Sciences in 2012, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.
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Robert Sapolsky
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- Graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- neurologistwriterbiologistuniversity teacherneuroscientist
- Biography
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Robert Morris Sapolsky is an American academic, neuroscientist, and primatologist. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, and is a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery. His research has focused on neuroendocrinology, particularly relating to stress. He is also a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya.
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Miriam Adelson
- Occupations
- publisherphysician
- Biography
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Miriam Adelson is an Israeli-American physician, businesswoman, and political donor.
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Alexis Carrel
- Occupations
- surgeonbiologistphysiologistsociologist
- Biography
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Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who spent most of his scientific career in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. Carrel was also a pioneer in tissue culture, transplantology and thoracic surgery. He is known for his leading role in implementing eugenic policies in Vichy France.
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Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Murillo
- Occupations
- immunologistresearcherpathologist
- Biography
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Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Murillo was a Colombian immunologist, pathologist and academic who was Professor of Pathology and Immunology. He was behind the world's first attempt to create a synthetic vaccine against the protozoal parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the cause of severe malaria, and which is responsible for the death of ~1.5 million people per year in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
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Barbara Ehrenreich
- Occupations
- opinion journalistpoliticianhistorianauthorimmunologist
- Biography
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Barbara Ehrenreich was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books. Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a memoir of her three-month experiment surviving on a series of minimum-wage jobs. She was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Erasmus Prize.
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David Baltimore
- Occupations
- virologistuniversity teachermicrobiologist
- Biography
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David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he served as president from 1997 to 2006. He founded the Whitehead Institute and directed it from 1982 to 1990. In 2008, he served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Peter J. Hotez
- Occupations
- university teacherpediatricianwritervaccinologist
- Biography
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Peter Jay Hotez is an American scientist, pediatrician, and advocate in the fields of global health, vaccinology, and neglected tropical disease control. He serves as founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics. He also serves as a University Professor of Biology at Baylor University.
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Rocky Tuan
- Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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Rocky Tuan Sung-chi is a Hong Kong medical researcher and bioengineer who served as the vice-chancellor and president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 2018 to 2025. Prior to his vice-chancellorship, Tuan also served as distinguished visiting professor and director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.
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Christian de Duve
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974
- Born in
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United Kingdom - Years
- 1917-2013 (aged 96)
- Occupations
- academicphysicianbiologistchemistphysiologist
- Biography
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Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisomes and lysosomes, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Albert Claude and George E. Palade ("for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell"). In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis on a single occasion.
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Ralph Steinman
- Occupations
- professorimmunologistphysicianbiologistresearcher
- Biography
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Ralph Marvin Steinman was a Canadian physician and medical researcher at Rockefeller University, who in 1973 discovered and named dendritic cells while working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Zanvil A. Cohn, also at Rockefeller University. Steinman was one of the recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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Gerald Edelman
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972
- Born in
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United States - Years
- 1929-2014 (aged 85)
- Occupations
- neurologistbiologistchemistphysicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Gerald Maurice Edelman was an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules. In interviews, he has said that the way the components of the immune system evolve over the life of the individual is analogous to the way the components of the brain evolve in a lifetime. There is a continuity in this way between his work on the immune system, for which he won the Nobel Prize, and his later work in neuroscience and in philosophy of mind.
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Günter Blobel
- Occupations
- biochemistphysicianuniversity teacherbiologistcell biologist
- Biography
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Günter Blobel was a Silesian German and American biologist and 1999 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell.
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Michael W. Young
- Occupations
- university teacherchronobiologistgeneticist
- Biography
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Michael Warren Young is an American biologist and geneticist. He has dedicated over three decades to research studying genetically controlled patterns of sleep and wakefulness within Drosophila melanogaster.
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Sally Kornbluth
- Occupations
- microbiologist
- Biography
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Sally Ann Kornbluth is an American cell biologist and academic administrator. She began serving as the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 2023.
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Wendell Meredith Stanley
- Occupations
- chemistbiochemistvirologistuniversity teacherwriter
- Biography
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Wendell Meredith Stanley was an American biochemist, virologist and Nobel laureate.
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Paul Greengard
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1925-2019 (aged 94)
- Occupations
- university teacherbiochemistneuroscientistpharmacologist
- Biography
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Paul Greengard was an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. In 2000, Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system. He was Vincent Astor Professor at Rockefeller University, and served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund, as well as the Scientific Council of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. He was married to artist Ursula von Rydingsvard.
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Charles M. Rice
- Occupations
- researchervirologist
- Biography
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Charles Moen Rice is an American virologist and Nobel Prize laureate whose main area of research is the hepatitis C virus. He is a professor of virology at the Rockefeller University in New York City and an adjunct professor at Cornell University and Washington University School of Medicine. At the time of the award he was a faculty at Rockefeller.
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Roderick MacKinnon
- Occupations
- chemistbiophysicistcrystallographerinternistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Roderick MacKinnon is an American biophysicist, neuroscientist, and businessman. He is a professor of molecular neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Peter Agre in 2003 for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels.
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Seth Lloyd
- Years
- 1960-.. (age 65)
- Occupations
- engineeracademicphysicistcomputer scientistnon-fiction writer
- Biography
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Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Edward Tatum
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1909-1975 (aged 66)
- Occupations
- geneticistbiochemist
- Biography
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Edward Lawrie Tatum was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The other half of that year's award went to Joshua Lederberg. Tatum was an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Robert Bruce Merrifield
- Occupations
- chemistuniversity teacherbiochemist
- Biography
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Robert Bruce Merrifield was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for the invention of solid phase peptide synthesis.
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Sidarta Ribeiro
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- 1995-2000 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- neuroscientistbiologist
- Biography
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Sidarta Tollendal Gomes Ribeiro is a Brazilian neuroscientist, writer, science communicator, and deputy director of the Brain Institute at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), which he joined in 2008 as full professor.
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John Howard Northrop
- Occupations
- university teacherbiochemistscientistchemist
- Biography
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John Howard Northrop was an American biochemist who, with James Batcheller Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley, won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award was given for these scientists' isolation, crystallization, and study of enzymes, proteins, and viruses. Northrop was a Professor of Bacteriology and Medical Physics, Emeritus, at University of California, Berkeley.
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David Albert
- Years
- 1954-.. (age 71)
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- In 1981 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- physicistphilosopher
- Biography
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David Z. Albert is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the MA Program in The Philosophical Foundations of Physics at Columbia University in New York.
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Chang Yi Wang
- Occupations
- chairpersonentrepreneur
- Biography
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Chang Yi Wang is the founder of United Biomedical, Inc. (UBI), headquartered in Hauppauge, New York, and its group of companies in Asia (including United Biomedical Asia ).
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Rafael Yuste
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- 1987-1992 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in neurobiology
- Occupations
- neurobiologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Rafael Yuste is a Spanish–American neurobiologist and one of the initiators of the BRAIN Initiative announced in 2013. He is currently a professor at Columbia University.
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Herbert Spencer Gasser
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1944
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1888-1963 (aged 75)
- Occupations
- university teacherphysicianphysiologistpsychologist
- Biography
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Herbert Spencer Gasser was an American physiologist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for his work with action potentials in nerve fibers while on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, awarded jointly with Joseph Erlanger.
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Odile Jacob
- Years
- 1954-.. (age 71)
- Occupations
- psychologistpublisher
- Biography
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Odile Jacob is a French publisher who founded Les Éditions Odile Jacob in the middle of the 1980s. She is also a trained scientist, studying the workings of the brain, the mind and thought. She is a member of Le Siècle.
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Haldan Keffer Hartline
- Awards
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967
- Born in
- United States
- Years
- 1903-1983 (aged 80)
- Occupations
- physiologistphysicianneuroscientistbiologistneurologist
- Biography
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Haldan Keffer Hartline ForMemRS was an American physiologist who was a co-recipient (with George Wald and Ragnar Granit) of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in analyzing the neurophysiological mechanisms of vision.
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Peter Walter
- Occupations
- university teacherbiologistbiochemistmolecular biologist
- Biography
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Peter Walter is a German-American molecular biologist and biochemist. He is currently the Director of the Bay Area Institute of Science at Altos Labs and an emeritus professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator until 2022.
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Bruce McEwen
- Occupations
- neuroscientistresearcher
- Biography
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Bruce Sherman McEwen was an American neuroendocrinologist and head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University. He was known for his work on the effects of environmental and psychological stress, having coined the term allostatic load.
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Jeffrey M. Friedman
- Occupations
- geneticistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Jeffrey M. Friedman is a molecular geneticist at New York City's Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight has had a major role in the area of human obesity. Friedman is a physician scientist studying the genetic mechanisms that regulate body weight. His research on various aspects of obesity received national attention in late 1994, when it was announced that he and his colleagues had isolated the mouse ob gene and its human homologue. They subsequently found that injections of the encoded protein, leptin, decreases body weight of mice by reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure. Current research is aimed at understanding the genetic basis of obesity in human and the mechanisms by which leptin transmits its weight-reducing signal.
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Harvey Lodish
- Occupations
- biologist
- Biography
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Harvey Franklin Lodish is a molecular and cell biologist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and lead author of the textbook Molecular Cell Biology. Lodish's research focused on cell surface proteins and other important areas at the interface between molecular cell biology and medicine.
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Stephen Grossberg
- Occupations
- university teacherneuroscientistmathematician
- Biography
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Stephen Grossberg is a cognitive scientist, theoretical and computational psychologist, neuroscientist, mathematician, biomedical engineer, and neuromorphic technologist. He is the Wang Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics & Statistics, Psychological & Brain Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering at Boston University.
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Nina Fedoroff
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- In 1972 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- geneticistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff is an American molecular biologist known for her research in life sciences and biotechnology, especially transposable elements or jumping genes. and plant stress response. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Science, she is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology.
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Erich Jarvis
- Occupations
- neuroscientistresearcher
- Biography
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Erich Jarvis is an American professor at Rockefeller University. He is the head of a team of researchers who study the neurobiology of vocal learning, a critical behavioral substrate for spoken language. By studying animals including songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds, his research attempts to show that bird groups have similar learning abilities to humans in the context of sound, such as learning new sounds and then passing on vocal repertoires from one generation to the next. Jarvis focuses on the molecular pathways involved in the perception and production of learned vocalizations, and the development of brain circuits for vocal learning.
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David J. Anderson
- Years
- 1956-.. (age 69)
- Occupations
- neurobiologistresearcherneuroscientist
- Biography
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David Jeffrey Anderson is an American neurobiologist. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His lab is located at the California Institute of Technology, where he currently holds the position of Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Leadership Chair and Director, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience. Anderson is a founding adviser of the Allen Institute for Brain Research, a non-profit research institute funded by the late Paul G. Allen, and spearheaded the Institute's early effort to generate a comprehensive map of gene expression in the mouse brain.
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Prabhjot Singh
- Years
- 1982-.. (age 43)
- Biography
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Prabhjot Singh is an American scientist, physician and healthcare researcher.
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Daniel W. Stroock
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Daniel Wyler Stroock is an American mathematician, a probabilist. He is regarded and revered as one of the fundamental contributors to Malliavin calculus with Shigeo Kusuoka and the theory of diffusion processes with S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan with an orientation towards the refinement and further development of Itô’s stochastic calculus.
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Vanessa Ruta
- Occupations
- neuroscientistresearcher
- Biography
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Vanessa Julia Ruta is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the structure and function of chemosensory circuits underlying innate and learned behaviors in the fly Drosophila melanogaster. She is the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University and, as of 2021, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Anthony Cerami
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- 1962-1967 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in biochemistry
- Occupations
- biochemist
- Biography
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Anthony Cerami is an American entrepreneur and medical research scientist.
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Olaf Sporns
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- In 1990 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- psychologistopinion journalistneuroscientistuniversity teacherteacher
- Biography
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Olaf Sporns is Provost Professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University and scientific co-director of the university's Network Science Institute. He is the founding editor of the academic journal Network Neuroscience, published by MIT Press.
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Amos Smith
- Occupations
- chemist
- Biography
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Amos Brittain Smith III was an American chemist and academic who was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
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M. R. C. Greenwood
- Occupations
- academic administrator
- Biography
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Mary Rita Cooke Greenwood is an American academic and nutritionist.
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Linda-Gail Bekker
- Occupations
- physicianuniversity teacherHIV/AIDS activist
- Biography
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Linda-Gail Bekker MBChB, DTMH, DCH, FCP is a professor of Medicine and Chief Operating Officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. She is also Director of the Desmund Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town. She is a Past President of the International AIDS Society (2016–18).
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Marina Picciotto
- Enrolled in Rockefeller University
- In 1992 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in molecular neurobiology
- Occupations
- neuroscientistresearcher
- Biography
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Marina Rachel Picciotto is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in addiction, memory, and reward behaviors. She is the Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and professor in the Child Study Center and the Departments of Neuroscience and of Pharmacology at the Yale University School of Medicine. She was named Director of the Yale University Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program in September 2023. From 2015 to 2023, she was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroscience. She is currently President of the Society for Neuroscience.
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Hazel Sive
- Years
- 1956-.. (age 69)
- Occupations
- university teacherbiologist
- Biography
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Hazel L. Sive is a South African-born biologist and educator. She is Dean of the College of Science, and Professor of Biology at Northeastern University. Sive is a research pioneer, award-winning educator and innovator in the higher education space who was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in November 2021. Prior to June 2020, she was a Member of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Sive studies development of the vertebrate embryo, and has made unique contributions to understanding how the face forms and how the brain develops its structure. Her lab also seeks to understand the origins of neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as epilepsy, autism, Pitt–Hopkins syndrome and 16p11.2 deletion syndrome.
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Cheng-Ming Chuong
- Occupations
- professorornithologistpathologistresearcherpaleontologist
- Biography
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Cheng-Ming Chuong is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist specializing in biomedical science.
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Bruce R. Korf
- Years
- 1944-.. (age 81)
- Occupations
- physicianresearchergeneticist
- Biography
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Bruce Richard Korf is a medical geneticist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In April 2009, he began a two-year term as president of the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG), a professional organization.
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Mandë Holford
- Born in
- United States
- Occupations
- chemistdiplomatresearcher
- Biography
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Mandë Holford is an associate professor in chemistry at Hunter College with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College. Her interdisciplinary research covering 'mollusks to medicine' spans chemistry and biology and aims to discover, characterize, and deliver novel peptides from venomous marine snails as tools for manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer.
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Erik van Nimwegen
- Occupations
- university teacher
- Biography
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Erik van Nimwegen is a Dutch computational biologist and Professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland.
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Nina Papavasiliou
- Years
- 20th Century
- Occupations
- immunologist
- Biography
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Nina Papavasiliou is an immunologist and Helmholtz Professor in the Division of Immune Diversity at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. She is also an adjunct professor at the Rockefeller University, where she was previously associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology. She is best known for her work in the fields of DNA and RNA editing.
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Marius Sudol
- Occupations
- biologist
- Biography
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Marius Sudol is an American molecular and cellular biologist. He was born in 1954 in Tarnow, Poland. In 1978, he immigrated to the United States to study at The Rockefeller University in New York City, where he received his Ph.D. in 1983. He is currently an Adjunct Faulty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC.
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Jessica R. Barson
- Occupations
- neuroscientist
- Biography
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Jessica Barson is an American neuroscientist and associate professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. Barson investigates neuropeptide signalling in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus as well as the nucleus accumbens to understand the neurobiological basis of addiction and elucidate targets for therapy.
