Richard Axel is a University Professor, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Columbia University Medical Center and a codirector of Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Dr. Axel obtained an AB from Columbia College and an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. In earlier studies, Dr. Axel and his colleagues, Michael Wigler and Saul Silverstein, developed gene transfer techniques that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell. These studies not only allowed for a novel approach to isolate genes but also provided a detailed analysis of how they worked. At the same time, these experiments allowed for the production of an increasingly large number of clinically important proteins. These studies also led to the isolation and functional analysis of a gene for the lymphocyte surface protein, CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV.
Dr. Axel then began to apply molecular biology to problems in neuroscience with the expectation that genetics could interface with neuroscience to approach the tenuous relationship between genes, behavior and perception. His studies on the logic of the sense of smell revealed over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odors and provided insight into how genes shape our perception of the sensory environment; this research earned him the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Axel’s current work centers on how the recognition of odors is translated into an internal representation of sensory quality in the brain and how this representation leads to meaningful thoughts and behavior.
Alumni
Mark Albers - Associate Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital
Hubert Amrein - Professor, Texas A&M University
David J. Anderson - Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology
Kristin Baldwin - Professor, Columbia University Medical Center
Gilad Barnea - Professor, Brown University
Leo Belluscio - Scientific Officer, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Roscoe Brady - Principal investigator & Psychiatrist, Beth Israel & Harvard Medical School
Linda Buck - Professor, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Cristian Boboila - Senior Principal Scientist, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Sophie Caron - Associate Professor, University of Utah
Moses Chao - Professor, New York University
Andrew Chess - Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Gloria Choi - Professor, MIT
Jay Chun - Chief of Neurosurgery, Overlook Medical Center
Tyler Cutforth - Associate Research Scientist, Columbia University
Sandeep Robert Datta - Professor, Harvard Medical School
Ebru Demir - Assistant Professor, Southern Illinois University
Anita Devineni - Assistant Professor, Emory University
Catherine Dulac - Professor, Harvard University
Clayton Eccard - Retired
James Edmondson - Principal Scientist, Galois
Andrew Fink - Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
Walter Fischler-Ruiz - Biotech Scientist, Yema Bio
Alexander Fleischmann - Professor, Brown University
Kevin Franks - Associate Professor, Duke University
Joseph Gogos - Professor, Columbia University Medical Center
Felicity Gore - Director of Preclinical Sciences, Stealth Biotech
Daisuke Hattori - Assistant Professor, UT Southwestern
René Hen - Professor, Columbia University
Smitha Jagadish - Vice President, Head of Rare Diseases, Bial
David Julius - Professor, UCSF
Anmo Kim - Assistant Professor, Hanyang University
Michelle Kim-Danely - Startup advisor and consultant
Phyllis Kisloff - Retired
David Klatzmann - Emeritus Professor, Sorbonne Université
Judith Korner - Professor of Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Greg Lemke - Professor, Salk Institute
Dan Littman - Professor, New York University
Tom Livelli - VP Life Sciences, Promega
Stavros Lomvardas - Professor, Columbia University
Israel Lowy - Senior Vice President, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Pascal Madaule - Deceased
Paul Maddon - Trustee, Columbia University
Filippo Mancia - Professor, Columbia University Medical Center
Neeli Mishra - Senior Data Scientist, Attain
Bianca Jones Marlin - Assistant Professor, Columbia University Zuckerman Institute
Susan Molinaux - Cofounder, Calithera
Peter Mombaerts - Director, Max Planck Research Unit for Neurogenetics
Nobuki Nakanishi - Principal Investigator, Scintillon Institute
John Ngai - Director, NIH BRAIN Initiative
Barbara Noro - Scientist at Schrodinger, Inc
Jeffrey Nye - Deceased
Silvana Obici - Professor, Stony Brook University
Joseph Osborne - Chief of Molecular Imaging (Radiologist), Weill Cornell
Vassilis Pachnis - Senior Group Leader, Francis Crick Institute
Inbok Paek - Hematologist, NYC
Angel Pellicer - Adjunct Professor, New York University
Abbas Rizvi - Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ellen Robey - Professor, UC Berkeley
Diane Robins - Professor, University of Michigan Medical School
Cory Root - Assistant Professor, UC San Diego
Erroll Rueckert - Biotech
Vanessa Ruta - Professor, Rockefeller University
Quentin Sattentau - Professor, University of Oxford
Evan Schaffer - Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Richard Scheller - Chairman of R&D, BridgeBio
Carl Schoonover - Senior Scientist, Allen Institute
Edmund Schwartz - Scientist, Kallyope
Kristin Scott - Retired
Nirao Shah - Professor, Stanford Medical School
Katie Shakman - Senior Data Scientist, Clinical Research, Lyra Health
Neil Shneider - Professor, Columbia University
Benjamin Shykind - Biotech Consultant
Kimberly Simpson - Scientific Director, Alligent group
Pamela Sklar - Deceased
Dara Sosulski - Managing Director, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Model Management, HSBC
Reuven Stein - Professor, Tel Aviv University Yonghua Sun - Retired
Maria Luísa Vasconcelos - Principal Investigator, Champalimaud
Robert Vassar - Professor, Northwestern University
Leslie Vosshall - Professor, The Rockefeller University; VP/CSO, HHMI
Jing Wang - Professor, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory
Fan Wang - Professor, MIT
Peter Wang - Postdoc, Stanford University
Michael Wigler - Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Barbara Wold - Professor, California Institute of Technology
Allan Wong - Investment Analyst, Arrowmark Partners
Herbert Zheng Wu - Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Mineto Yokoi - Professor, Kyoto University
C. Ron Yu - Professor and Chair of Neurosciences, Case Western Reserve University
