Presenters

Rex L. Chisholm, PhD
director, Center for Genetic Medicine; Adam and Richard T. Lind Professor of Medical Genetics and professor, cell and molecular biology and surgery,
Feinberg School of Medicine

Dr. Chisholm received both his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan where he was a trainee of the NIH training program in Genetics. As a doctoral student, Dr. Chisholm investigated recombination between DNA introduced into cells and cellular chromosomes, a process critical for the genetic modification of animal cells and animals.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he developed methods for analyzing the patterns of gene expression during development. Since 1984 Chisholm has been on the faculty of Northwestern University where his research program uses genetic and molecular genetic approaches to investigate the fundamental process of cell motility (movement). These studies have contributed to our understanding of processes such as wound healing, tumor metastasis (spreading), and embryonic development.

Author of over 140 scientific papers and abstracts, Chisholm has served as a member of scientific review committees for the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. He also served as Director of the Biomedical Hands-on-Laboratory of the Science Writing Fellowships Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Chisholm received a Basil O’Connor Fellowship from the March of Dimes and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Since 1990, Dr. Chisholm has been director of the Center for Genetic Medicine, a partnership between Northwestern University, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Children’s Memorial Hospital and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare that facilitates the development of new genetic knowledge and its application to medicine.

Dr. Chisholm’s research focuses on understanding the mechanisms responsible for various aspects of cell movement including cell migration, intracellular movements responsible for separating chromosomes during cell division and moving cellular components inside of cells. Research from his laboratory has also helped us understand how this movement is regulated. This work helps us understand critical processes such as wound healing, the formation of tissues during embryonic development as well as disease processes such as tumor metastasis. He is also very actively involved in the area of bioinformatics which involves the use of computer technology to facilitate the use of very large amounts of data such as is associated with genome sequences. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Chisholm also has a strong interest in the public understanding of science. He speaks regularly to lay audiences about issues of biomedical research and especially genetics and stems cells. In addition to fostering public understanding of the science behind these timely research areas, he is also interested in stimulating a public dialog regarding the impact these technologies will have on society and on our lives.

John A. Kessler, MD
Benjamin & Virginia T. Boshes Professor of Neurology; chair, Department of Neurology; director, Evelyn Frances Feinberg Clinical Neuroscience Research Institute, Feinberg School of Medicine

Dr. John A. Kessler is both a clinical neurologist and a developmental biologist whose research focuses on mechanisms regulating neural stem cell differentiation and the role of neural growth factors in development of the nervous system.

The long range goal of his research program has been to develop techniques for regeneration of the damaged or diseased nervous system. His laboratory has described some of the basic mechanisms underlying differentiation of neural stem cells, and he has pioneered studies of an important group of growth factors, the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), in neural stem cell development.

In addition to his many contributions to the basic biology of growth factors in the nervous system, his laboratory did most of the preclinical work that led to clinical trials of nerve growth factor and other neurotrophic factors for the treatment of neuropathies, and his research group also led the clinical trials.

He is the author of more than 170 research publications, and is a member of a number of national and international scientific review panels. He is Chairman of the Scientific Review Committee for the March of Dimes, serves on several editorial boards and is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Neuroscience Research. He has received numerous awards for his research endeavors, and he also sits on the board of trustees of two hospitals.

Dr. Kessler received his AB from Princeton University and his MD from Cornell University Medical College. He was trained in internal medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York and in neurology at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center, and he is board certified both in internal medicine and in neurology. He became an Associate Professor at Cornell University Medical School before moving to Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he became the Alpern Professor and Director of the Rose Kennedy Center for Research in Mental Retardation. He was also Chairman of Neurology at the North Bronx Hospital Network and Vice-chairman at Albert Einstein before moving to Northwestern in 2000 to assume his current responsibilities.

He is married with four children, and his wife Marilyn is a gynecologist on the faculty at Northwestern Medical School.

Mark Ratner, PhD (G69)
Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Mark Ratner was born in Cleveland, educated at Harvard and Northwestern University, and in Aarhus, Denmark and Munich, Germany. He taught at New York University for five years before returning to Northwestern in 1975.

Ratner is now Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a Director of Northwestern University's Center for Nanofabricaton and Molecular Self-Assembly. He has also served as Associate Dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the Department of Chemistry, and Director of the Writing in Science program, and has been named to the Northwestern Faculty Teaching Honor Roll 10 times.

Dr. Ratner’s achievements in theoretical chemistry and materials science rest on his work in predicting and understanding the electronic, optical, reactive, and switching behaviors of molecules.

He has worked in such areas as polymer electrolyte materials, nonlinear optical and light-emitting diode display materials, the theory of chemical reactions, the structure and unfolding of proteins, and the fundamental structural characterization of glassy materials. He is credited with starting the field of molecular electronics in 1974 when he published a paper predicting the diode behavior of particular classes of donor/acceptor molecules.

Author of more than 330 journal articles, he is also a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ratner has held fellowships from the Sloan Foundation and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute for Advanced Study and has been a visiting professor at Odensee University in Denmark and at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center.

His scientific interests involved the nature of molecular processes, including electron transfer, optical excitations, quantum dynamics, configurational changes and molecular recognition. More important interests include his two children and spending time around anything that involves water.