News and Events
Pharmacology Professor Awarded for Innovative Research
Dr. Samie Jaffrey, professor of Pharmacology, was recently named one of only 42 winners of a Transformative R01 award from the NIH. His project, Novel Fluorescent Sensors for Simple, Sensitive, and Specific Protein Detection, holds potential to speed up laboratory testing by instantly measuring proteins in biological samples.
Dr. Jaffrey and his lab are working to develop new protein recognition tools to rapidly emit light upon binding specific target proteins. These would simplify and reduce the expense of protein detection, which is essential for diagnosing illnesses, detecting environmental toxins, and for most types of research.
The Transformative R01 grants aim to, "encourage investigators to explore bold ideas that have the potential to catapult fields forward and speed the translation of research into improved health." The winning projects reflect an exceptional level of creativity in proposing research that will challenge existing or create new paradigms.
To learn more about his research, click here.
Open House
| Date: | Saturday, October 24, 2009 |
| Time: | 11:30 am to 3:00 pm |
| Location: | Weill Cornell Medical College 1300 York Avenue Weill Auditorium, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10065 |
Agenda
| 11:30 - 12:00: | Registration |
| 12:00 - 12:30: | Program Presentation |
| 12:30 - 3:00: | Meet representatives from our PhD programs of study:
|
Open House Online Registration
Graduate Students Teach Summer Academy
Twelve students from the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School (MCNDHS) spent the past 
five weeks exploring basic concepts of molecular biology through a series of lectures and carefully designed experiments taught by Weill Cornell PhD students.
The fifth annual Summer Academy, organized by the Outreach Office, was held
July 6 - August 6, 2009. The course, Techniques in Molecular Biology - From DNA to Protein, exposed participants to commonly used DNA and protein techniques such as: DNA isolation, restriction digestion, transformation, and western blotting.
Xiaoai Chen, PhD, Outreach Director, oversees the program. Dr. Chen along with PhD students Aditya Venugopal, Alessia Deglincerti, Romula (Jr.) Hurtado, and Urszula Nowak each took a turn leading the class for a week. 
Eighteen graduate teaching assistants also participated. All enjoyed seeing the progress the students made in just five short weeks and the challenges presented throughout the course.
Aditya Venugopal, an IMP student in Dr. Carl Nathan's lab, got involved with the Summer Academy four years ago after helping with single class visits to local high schools.
"My favorite part of participating in the Summer Academy is that in the beginning you can see the students are interested in learning but they don't understand the whole story yet. By the last week they understand how everything ties together and you can see the comprehension on their faces," he said. "I love teaching. If I haven't graduated by next summer, I will be right back here." 
From L to R: Aditya Venugopal (PhD student TA from WCGS), Jia-Wen Yu, Ho Ming Leung, Xiu-Lan Zheng, Anuj Shrestha, Pin-Guang Yang, Xiaoai Chen (Outreach Director), Cheikh Mbeguere, Jessie Almonord, Hui-Ling Chen, Cen Qiu, Tenzin Dechen, Beth Novick (Course Coordinator from MCNDHS), Aneeza Chaudhry, Tenzin Dasel, Dr. Randi B. Silver (Associate Dean of WCGS), and Mark Testa (Science Principal from MCNDHS)
PBSB Student Honored at Bioengineering Conference
Jonathan Bourne, a PBSB student in Dr. Peter Torzilli's lab, was awarded second place in the PhD student paper competition and poster presentation at the 2009 Summer Bioengineering Conference, held June 17-21 in Lake Tahoe, CA.
Bourne placed in the Tissue and Cellular Biomechanics and Imaging category for his presentation entitled, "Collagen Molecular Conformation Exhibits Strain-Rate Dependent Response to Axial Deformation in Silico."
His research was supported through a NIAMS grant and the NIH supported Clinical and Translational Education Program of the Weill Cornell Medical College's Clinical and Translational Science Center.
Congratulations to the WCGS Class of 2009
Photo by Amelia Panico
Forty-seven Weill Cornell graduate students participated in this years Commencement ceremonies. The ceremony, shared with the Medical College graduates, took place on Monday, June 2 at Carnegie Hall.
Following remarks from Cornell University President David Skorton and graduate student speaker Anne Marie Hein, nine MS degrees and 38 PhD degrees were conferred.
Dr. David Hajjar, Dean of the Graduate School, honored Colonel Geoffrey Ling, MD, PhD '82, with the Graduate School of Medical Sciences Alumni Award of Distinction for his work in developing advanced prosthetic limbs for soldiers.
A reception honoring the graduates followed the ceremony.
Best wishes to our 2009 graduates!
2009 Distinguished Alumnus to Speak at Commencement
Colonel Geoffrey Ling, MD, PhD, and recipient of the 2009 WCGS Distinguished Alumnus Award will speak June 2 at the Medical College and Graduate School Commencement in Carnegie Hall. Nine MS and 38 PhD degrees will be conferred.
Col. Ling is acclaimed for his work in developing advanced prosthetic limbs for soldiers. He earned a PhD in Pharmacology from Weill Cornell Graduate School in 1982 and an MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1989. An active duty U.S. Army Colonel, he is the only board certified Neurocritical Care Specialist in the Department of Defense.
Also, Col. Ling serves as a Professor and the Vice Chairman of the Neurology Department at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, the Director of Neurocritical Care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and as an Attending Neurocritical Care physician at John Hopkins Hospital. He focuses on brain and spinal cord injuries and has assisted in determining causes of, and potential mitigation strategies for, traumatic brain injuries caused by explosion and developing advanced prosthetic limbs.
He has received numerous national awards for this work and has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews and book chapters. Learn more about Col. Ling's accomplishments.
Student Awards to be Presented at Convocation
Nine graduate students will be recognized as winners of the 2009 Vincent du Vigneaud Awards and the Julian R. Rachele Prize at Convocation on June 1.
The 2009 Vincent du Vigneaud Symposium was held on May 5. This year's award winners were: Nikki Charles, Jennifer Chien, and Chao Shi for their poster presentations; Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, Kang Chen, and Vasilena Gocheva for their oral presentations; and Christina Maksymiuk as the first-year award winner. Learn more about this year's prize winners.
Julian R. Rachele Prize winners Gloria Kwon and Andrea Hooper are also being honored at Convocation.
Kwon, a Neurology student in Dr. Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis' lab, was selected for her paper, "The Endoderm of the Mouse Embryo Arises by Dynamic Widespread Intercalation of Embryonic Lineages," published in Developmental Cell.
Hooper, a PBSB student in Dr. Shahin Rafii's lab, was chosen for her paper, "Engraftment and Reconstitution of Hematopoiesis is Dependent on VEGFR2-Mediated Regeneration of Sinusoidal Endothelial Cells," published in Cell Stem Cell.
Students Recognized at 29th Annual Vincent du Vigneaud Symposium
Nearly 100 Weill Cornell Graduate School students presented their research findings at the 29th annual Vincent du Vigneaud Symposium held on May 5, 2009. Seven students were awarded prizes for their accomplishments. Learn more about this year's prize winners.
Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego's School of Medicine and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, delivered the symposium's keynote address. Dr. Goldstein is a leading figure in national science policy and the biotechnology industry. He helped write the California proposition which created a funding organization to support stem cell research.
The student-run symposium honors Nobel Laureate Dr. Vincent du Vigneaud, who headed the Department of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medical College from 1938 to 1967.
Faculty Productivity Yields Top Program Ratings
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that all seven of Weill Cornell Graduate School's PhD programs have been named among the top ten in Academic Analytic’s annual Top Research Universities Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index for 2007-2008.
Faculty from 375 universities offering PhD programs were evaluated on five categories: books published, journal publications, citations of journal articles, federal grant dollars awarded, and honors and awards.
More on the results and how the rankings were determined.
Pharmacology Faculty Member Chairs WHO Committee
Dr. Marcus M. Reidenberg was elected chair of the 17th World Health Organization Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines at a meeting held March 23-27, 2009. The Committee develops medication lists used by organizations like UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and many countries’ national health services. For the past 30 years these lists have led a movement toward using essential medications to promote global health equity.
PBSB Student Honored
Ameer Thompson was awarded the Student Research Achievement Award at the Biophysical Society's 53rd Annual Meeting held February 28 - March 4 in Boston. He was recognized for his work under the direction of Dr. Crina Nimigean on the mechanism of potassium channel slectivity using small cation blockers.
Click here to learn more about his findings.
Three WCGS Faculty Honored
Dr. Francis Lee, a member of the Pharmacology graduate program and an Associate Professor of both psychiatry and pharmacology, received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in December 2008. Dr. Lee was one of only 12 awardees nominated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in recognition of his research into the molecular and neural mechanisms of depression, anxiety disorder, and other mental illnesses.
Learn more about the award and Dr. Lee’s research.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) named Dr. Scott N. Keeney, program Co-director of the Graduate School’s BCMB Allied program as one of its 56 new investigators in 2008. Dr. Keeney is a member of the Molecular Biology program within the Sloan-Kettering Institute; his research focuses on learning more about how the cellular process called recombination occurs. In recombination, chromosomes exchange pieces of information during meiosis (the specialized cell division that is needed to produce eggs and sperm).
Learn more about Dr. Keeney’s research.
Weill Cornell Assistant Professor and Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology graduate program member Dr. Scott Blanchard received the prestigious Career Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for 2008. The award provides more than $800,000 over a five-year period to support Dr. Blanchard’s groundbreaking research in cell biology. Dr. Blanchard is perhaps best known for advancing fluorescence technologies that allow scientists to observe the activities of single-molecules in real-time. Much of his previous and ongoing research has been focused on the ribosome, the complex molecular machine responsible for translating DNA-encoded instructions into usable proteins.
Learn more about Dr. Blanchard’s research.
Student-Run Research Symposium
Weill Cornell graduate students are organizing the annual du Vigneaud Research Symposium to be held May 5, 2009. The symposium, honoring the late Nobel Laureate Dr. Vincent du Vigneaud, former Chair of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medical College, is a WCGS tradition dating back to 1981. Students’ presentation of their research through posters and oral presentations is an opportunity for WCGS students and faculty to exchange ideas across disciplines. The day begins with this years’ keynote speaker, Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, PhD, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California San Diego.
