MD-PhD Alumnae Dr. Agata Smogorzewska Appointed Tenure-Track Faculty at The Rockefeller University

MD-PhD alumnae Dr. Agata Smogorzewska has been appointed to a tenure-track faculty position at The Rockefeller University (RU).

Dr. Agata Smogorzewska is a physician-scientist whose research focuses on DNA repair and on the molecular basis of the genetic disease Fanconi anemia, has been named assistant professor and will join The Rockefeller University as head of the Laboratory of Genome Maintenance in July. Agata received her Ph.D. at Rockefeller in 2002, under the tutelage of Titia de Lange, and her M.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2003. She did her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and has conducted postdoctoral research in Stephen Elledge’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Agata is interested in Fanconi anemia, a genetic disorder that leads to leukemia and other forms of cancer, and in pathways that prevent cancer development, specifically those that repair DNA and induce replicative senescence. Agata’s research has already led to the identification of a key gene involved in Fanconi anemia and has yielded several proteins that are suspected of either triggering replicative senescence or resisting DNA crosslink damage. This work, which she will continue at Rockefeller, has the potential to help patients with genetic disorders. It will also shed light on the complex processes by which cells detect and repair damaged DNA and may have implications for understanding how cancers form and grow.