Whitehead In the City
Whitehead in the City features dynamic discussions between Whitehead Institute Director and President Ruth Lehmann and some of the most thought-provoking scientific leaders in the field. Bringing a taste of the vibrant Cambridge life science community to New York, the series explores some of the pressing scientific issues and groundbreaking discoveries of today.
Harmonie Club
The Harmonie Room, 3rd Floor
4 East 60th Street
New York, NY
6:00 Registration and Networking Reception (In-person only)
6:45 Program
7:45 Post-Event Networking Reception (In-person only)
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Cori Bargmann
Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University; Distinguished Fellow and Head of Science Emerita, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Cori Bargmann is a neuroscientist and geneticist. She received a BS from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. from MIT, where she studied the neu/HER2 oncogene with Bob Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute before beginning her studies of the genetics of behavior as a postdoc with Bob Horvitz. After 13 years as a faculty member at UCSF, she moved to The Rockefeller University as the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior. Her work has addressed the relationships between genes, circuits, and behaviors in C. elegans, including the molecular basis of odor recognition and odor preference, the circuit logic and neuromodulatory systems connecting odors to behavioral responses, natural trait variation in social and foraging behaviors, and the molecules involved in nervous system wiring. She has received scientific honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. In 2013-2014, she co-chaired the NIH working group for President Obama’s Brain Initiative. In 2016 she became the first Head of Science at a new philanthropy, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a position she held until 2022; she returned to her lab at Rockefeller full-time at the end of the year.
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Ruth Lehmann
Director and President, Whitehead Institute
Lehmann earned her undergraduate degree and a PhD in biology with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard from the University of Tübingen, in her home country of Germany. She has conducted research at the University of Washington, the University of Freiburg, the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, She was a Member of the Whitehead Institute Member and on the faculty of MIT from 1988-1996. She then moved to New York University (NYU), where she served in a number of leadership roles specifically as the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology and director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (2006-2020) and from 2014-2020 as the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine. She also became an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1990 and again in 1997. In 2020, Lehmann took on the role of president and director of the Whitehead Institute. She has received national and international recognition including election to the National Academy of Sciences as Foreign Associate in 2005 and election as Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2012. She is currently editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology and will serve as president of the American Society for Cell Biology starting in 2021.
