News

Two members of the WCM faculty have been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Carl Nathan, MD, and David Hajjar,  PhD, are among the 213 scholars, scientists, and world leaders—including two others from Cornell University—who received the honor.

Carl Nathan, MD

Nathan, a prominent authority on tuberculosis, is the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology and chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

The addition of a chemical tag on an RNA molecule is the critical switch that inactivates one X chromosome in every cell, ensuring healthy development in all female mammals, according to new research by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings, reported Sept. 7 in Nature, could offer researchers a new scientific avenue to pursue treatments for X-linked chromosomal diseases in females such as Rett syndrome.

Dr. Jonathan Victor is part of a team of researchers that last fall received a $6.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at uncovering the universal algorithms at work in the nervous system when animals use olfaction to navigate. An understanding of this neural circuitry could shed light on the human brain — and spur the development of technology to replicate the services that animals provide, thus keeping highly trained and often valuable animals out of dangerous...

The 6th annual SPARC Jr. conference took place on July 25 at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Rockefeller Research Laboratories Auditorium. SPARC, which stands for Achieving Successful and Productive Academic Research Careers, was launched in 2010 in direct response to the National Institute of Health’s call for a vigilant and expedient response to the underrepresentation of women and racial/ethnic minority investigators in academic research.

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