Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board members include:

Michael Levine, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. 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.

     Dr. 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. Because his own research has been so dependent on the latest technology, Dr. Levine is well positioned to help the Stowers Institute achieve its goal of developing and using technology to enable investigators to pursue new paths of inquiry.

     Dr. Levine was appointed to the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 1998. He has a Ph.D. from Yale University and is Co-director of the Center for Integrative Genomics and F. Williams Professor of Genetics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California-Berkeley.

Susan L. Lindquist, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. Lindquist was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 for pioneering the molecular understanding of how cells respond to extreme stress by producing proteins designed to prevent and repair damage. She elegantly elucidated how heat shock proteins are regulated post-transcriptionally and how they produce stress tolerance by modulating the activity and aggregation state of other proteins.

     Changes in protein conformation govern most processes in cell biology, and protein-conformational defects are responsible for an extraordinary variety of pathologies, ranging from Alzheimer's disease and cancer in humans to heat and drought susceptibility in plants. Dr. Lindquist's laboratory studies cellular mechanisms that govern several types of protein-conformational switches. Because protein folding problems are universal, she works primarily with yeast, fruit flies, and the mustard weed, model organisms that provide powerful tools for molecular genetic analysis. Currently, her lab focuses on chaperone proteins and prion proteins.

     Dr. Lindquist received her undergraduate degree in microbiology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. She joined the University of Chicago faculty, where she subsequently became an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Lindquist was appointed to the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 2000. She served as Director of the Whitehead Institute and is currently a member of the Whitehead Institute and Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Douglas A. Melton, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. Melton was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 for notable research in molecular embryology. Work from his laboratory has advanced knowledge of how cell fates are specified during vertebrate development through studies on the localization of DNA transcripts in eggs and the proteins responsible for the induction of mesoderm and neural tissue.

     Dr. Melton's research seeks to explain the molecular basis of how cell fates and organ formation are specified during development of frog, chick, and mouse embryos. His laboratory currently focuses on the development of the endoderm and its derivatives, principally the pancreas. His long-term goal is learning how manipulation of genes in stem cells could cause them to differentiate into pancreatic cells suitable for transplantation into patients with diabetes.

     Dr. Melton, who joined the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 1999, earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Illinois, a B.A. in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in molecular biology at Trinity College and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University. He is currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor in the Natural Sciences at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Harvard University, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and co-director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute and Center for Genomics Research.

Eric N. Olson, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. 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.

     Dr. 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, Dr. Olson seeks insights into the molecular pathologies underlying congenital and acquired heart disease in humans.

     Dr. Olson, who joined the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 2000, received a BA degree in biology and chemistry from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Wake Forest University Medical School. He is currently a Professor in and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Associate Director of the D.W. Reynolds Center of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He also serves as Director of the Hamon Center for Basic Research in Cancer.

Janet Rossant, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. Janet Rossant is Chief of Research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She is also a University Professor at the University of Toronto, and Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics and the Department of Obstetrics/Gynaecology at the University of Toronto.

     Her research interests center on understanding the genetic control of normal and abnormal development in the early mouse embryo using both cellular and genetic manipulation techniques. She is also involved in stem cell research, with her discovery of a novel placental stem cell type, the trophoblast stem cell. She is Deputy Director of the Canadian Stem Cell Network. She also directs the Centre for Modelling Human Disease in Toronto, which is undertaking genome-wide mutagenesis in mice to develop new mouse models of human disease.

     Dr. Rossant, who joined the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 2005, trained at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, United Kingdom and has been in Canada since 1977, first at Brock University and then in Toronto. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Societies of London and Canada and a Distinguished Investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Joshua Sanes, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. Sanes has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2002. He is a renowned neurobiologist and Director of the Center for Brain Neuroscience in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where he is also a professor.

     Dr. Sanes is a leader in the study of factors that regulate synapse formation. Information processing in the brain occurs at synapses, and defects in synapse formation are likely to underlie many neurological and psychiatric disease He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, and Neuron. From 1999 to 2003, he served on the National Advisory Council for National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health. He is currently the chair of the Scientific Advisory Boards for the Max-Planck Institut for Neurobiology in Munich and the Searle Scholars Program. Additionally, Dr. Sanes serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

     Dr. Sanes completed postdoctoral work with Dr. Zach Hall in the Department of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed doctoral and master’s degrees at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Psychology at Yale College. Prior to joining Harvard University, Dr. Sanes was the Alumni Endowed Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine.

Charles J. Sherr, MD, Ph.D.
Member of the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board

     Dr. Sherr was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 for outstanding contributions to retrovirology, oncogene characterization and function, receptor signaling, and cell cycle research.

     Dr. Sherr studies oncogenes and tumor-suppressor proteins and is particularly interested in their role in governing mitogen-dependent progression through the mammalian cell division cycle. His laboratory focuses on how cells make a commitment to replicate their chromosomes and divide again or to withdraw instead into a quiescent state. In cancer cells, the molecular regulators that normally control this decision are so frequently disrupted by genetic damage that their loss may be essential for tumor formation.

     Dr. Sherr, who joined the Stowers Institute Scientific Advisory Board in 2000, received an A.B. degree from Oberlin College and M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from New York University School of Medicine and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the National Cancer Institute before joining St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is now a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Herrick Foundation Endowed Chair of the Department of Genetics and Tumor Cell Biology.