Category: Campus Life

Sarah Baker On June 13, 2019, The Rockefeller University will add thirty new alumni to its community, each with a freshly obtained Ph.D. The road to a Ph.D. is not an easy one and requires a combination of hard work, resilience, creativity, motivation, and probably some luck. Some of the graduating class have moved on…

Natural Selections Interviews Rockefeller’s Viviana Risca, Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Genome Architecture and Dynamics Alice Gadau At the age of fourteen, Viviana Risca spent her summer break unlike most teenagers. Every morning, she took the train from Long Island to work in Dr. Daniel Eichinger’s parasitology laboratory at New York University. Despite the…

Sarah Baker The Natural Selections Editorial Board in front of the new President’s Office and Dean’s Office building. Excitement abounds at The Rockefeller University as we prepare for the grand opening of the new $500 million Stavros Niarchos Foundation—David Rockefeller River Campus, a four-year construction project to add two acres and a new research building…

Sarah Baker The Ancient Babylonians are thought to be the first people to make the equivalent of what we think of as a New Year’s resolution. Four millennia ago, they would make promises to the gods that they would pay their debts in the upcoming year. This happened at the beginning of the Babylonian new…

Sarah Ackerman Science policy is a broad subject, which is vitally important to all scientists and members of society. It encompasses many topics ranging from NIH grant funding, to restrictions on new technologies, such as CRISPR or stem cells, to how data and science should be used when making policies about health care or the…

Alice Gadau “What about ‘Spooktacular’?”, “I like spooky scientists!”, “What about something with CRISPR?”, “Oh! I got it ‘CRISPR Gone Wrong’!”—and that is how, in the back of yellow cab, Donovan Phua came up with the theme for this year’s Halloween party. Each year, the first year graduate student class organizes the Rockefeller University Halloween…

Sarah Baker Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) falls on the first full week of October, meaning that this year it will occur October 7-13. MIAW was established by Congress in 1990 after the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) pushed to increase public awareness about mental health and illness and to reduce stigma in talking…

  Joseph Luna Editor’s note: This article was originally published as Twenty-four visits to Stockholm: a concise history of the Rockefeller Nobel Prizes by Joseph Luna in June 2016.   Günter Blobel (May 21, 1936 – February 18, 2018) Let’s start with a fantastical scene: picture a band of Neolithic humans in a hot air…

Johannes Buheitel First, there were horse-drawn wagons. Then, during the industrial revolution, the steam engine took over and ultimately helped to win the West. But all of these achievements seem to pale in comparison to what the venerable Metropolitan Transport Authority, MTA for short, has unveiled on New Year’s Day: The new Q train extension,…

Juliette Wipf This year’s Rockefeller Postdoctoral Association (PDA) Retreat was held from September 21 to 22 at the Interlaken Inn in Lakeville, CT. The Interlaken Inn is a charming country resort with great facilities and over 130 Rockefeller postdocs came to enjoy this getaway. Many supported the event with presentations, ranging in scope from social…