The leadership team at the Stowers Institute is dedicated to fulfilling the mission of our founders by making a significant contribution to human health through world-class research.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
B.S., Chemistry, University of Michigan
Ph.D., Biochemistry, Harvard University
Rachel Green was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 for her work on the molecular mechanisms of protein synthesis and its regulation in diverse systems. She was also elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017 for her contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health.
Her recent work has used biochemical and genome-wide approaches to define the interconnections between translation, mRNA decay and ribosome rescue. These processes have particular relevance to understanding ribosome homeostasis in biological systems and thus have relevance to disorders broadly defined as “ribosomopathies”.
Green received her B.S. in chemistry at the University of Michigan in 1986 and completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University in 1992. After a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins in 1998. Green is currently a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and in the Department of Biology at the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Green joined the Stowers Scientific Advisory Board in 2017.
Professor, Columbia University Department of Systems Biology
Oliver Hobert is a Professor in the Columbia University Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and holds an Interdisciplinary Faculty position in the Department of Systems Biology.
His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms responsible for generating the remarkable diversity of cell types found in the nervous system. Using C. elegans as a model system, they have revealed the regulatory mechanisms that control terminal neuronal identity and demonstrated that these mechanisms are conserved in chordates. They also used this knowledge to reprogram the identity of heterologous cell types to become specific neuron types.
The lab’s other interests include the origins of asymmetrical neuronal differentiation along the left/right axis, the molecular mechanisms of neural system plasticity, and the conservation and evolution of neuronal gene expression programs. His lab has also developed a number of tools to analyze whole genome sequence data.
Director, Whitehead Institute
Ph.D., University of Tübingen, Germany
Ruth Lehmann was elected as a Foreign Associate to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 for her pioneering contributions in the field of developmental biology. She is widely known for her work on germ cells, which give rise to egg and sperm during the early development of the embryo. By studying aberrant development of mutant germ cell lines in the fruit fly, her research has laid the foundation for understanding the potential causes of testicular germ line cancers and sterility.
Using genetics and live-imaging, Lehmann identified several mechanisms that regulate germ cell specification, migration and survival in the embryo, and germ line stem cell maintenance in the adult. In recent studies, her lab demonstrated the role of lipid signaling in germ cell migration and identified the genetic basis of transcriptional silencing in primordial germ cells and the mechanisms that control homeostasis of germ cell proliferation.
Lehmann, who joined the Stowers Scientific Advisory Board in 2011, received her Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen, Germany. After postdoctoral training in Tübingen and at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK, she joined the Whitehead Institute and the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before she moved to NYU School of Medicine's Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in 1996. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, the director of the Skirball Institute and the Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology and the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology.
Director, The Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University
Ph.D., Yale University
Michael Levine was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998 in recognition of his elegant, insightful, and complete analysis of regulatory events that govern segmentation and dorsal-ventral polarity in fruit fly embryos. His work provided a dramatic example of combinatorial regulation at a complex enhancer and established new paradigms for transcriptional control.
Levine studies regulatory DNA and cell fate specification. His laboratory uses new technologies to manipulate embryos in myriad ways to understand how crude gradients of regulatory factors produce sharp on/off patterns of gene expression. These technologies have made possible a geometric growth in the gene-based approach to developmental biology.
Levine, who was appointed to the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 1998, received a Ph.D. from Yale University and trained at the University of Basel. He was awarded the Monsanto Prize in Molecular Biology from National Academy of Sciences in 1996.
Chair, Scientific Advisory Board
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
B.A., Biology and Chemistry, Wake Forest University
Ph.D., Biochemistry, Wake Forest University Medical School
Eric Olson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 for his integrated use of biochemical, genetic, and molecular biological methods to resolve how tissues are determined and differentiated in multicellular organisms. His research unveiled a compelling description of how myogenic and cardiogenic transcription factors control organogenesis of skeletal muscle and heart tissues in fruit flies and laboratory mice.
Olson's laboratory focuses on the gene regulatory proteins and signaling molecules that control cardiac muscle development and also play an important role in remodeling the adult heart during pathologic cardiac enlargement and heart failure. By deciphering the mechanisms that regulate cardiac development and gene expression in model organisms, he seeks insights into the molecular pathologies underlying congenital and acquired heart disease in humans.
Olson, who joined the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 2000, received a B.A. in biology and chemistry from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Wake Forest University Medical School.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
B.S. in Physics, Harvard University
Ph.D. in Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jonathan S. Weissman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, in part for his contribution to the development of the technique of ribosome profiling, as well as co-development of CRISPRi and CRISPRa, which provide researchers the ability to turn on and off any desired gene. These discoveries are revolutionizing both basic science and applied medical research. Another research area for Weissman is understanding how cells ensure the proper folding of proteins and the catastrophic consequences of protein misfolding. In addition, he and his team are developing experimental and analytical approaches for exploring the organizational principles of complex biological systems.
Weissman, who joined the Scientific Advisory Board in 2016, received his undergraduate physics degree from Harvard College. After obtaining a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Weissman pursued postdoctoral fellowship training at the Yale University School of Medicine.
He has been honored with the 2008 Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2010, the 2015 Keith R Porter Lecture Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, and the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery.