 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
The Nancy S. Rafferty Lectureship
7/6/06 - 9:30 AM - Whitman Auditorium
"Regulatory interactions in neural crest development and evolution" - Dr. Marianne Bronner-Fraser, California Institute of Technology
Dr. Marianne Bronner-Fraser received her Sc.B. in Biophysics from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. She joined the faculty at University of California, Irvine in 1980 and became a full professor in 1990 as well as co-director of the Developmental Biology Center. In 1996, she moved to the division of biology at Caltech where she is currently the Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology. She served as chair of the faculty at Caltech from 2001 to 2003 and, together with Dr. Scott Fraser, was co-director of the Embryology course at the MBL from 1996
to 2001.
Dr. Bronner-Fraser’s research centers on the early formation of the nervous system in vertebrate embryos. The nervous system forms from a group of cells that would otherwise become skin. Because of an interaction with neighboring tissue, these cells instead form brain, spinal cord, and a migratory cell type called the neural crest. These cells have “stem cell” properties and form numerous mature cells including neurons, pigment cell, and cartilage. Her laboratory is attempting to unravel the molecular and cellular signals by which these tissues form and evolve using a combination of embryological, molecular, and genomic approaches.
Dr. Bronner-Fraser serves on the Council for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, Board of Directors of the Gordon Research Conferences and Society for Developmental Biology, Scientific Advisory Board for the March of Dimes. and is an editor for several journals including Developmental Biology, Journal of Cell Biology and Molecular Biology of the Cell. She currently has a Javits Award and her laboratory is funded by several grants from the National Institutes of Health.
The Nancy S. Rafferty Lectureship
in Embryology has been established to recognize Dr. Rafferty’s long career in eye research. Dr. Rafferty was instrumental in elucidating the ultrastructural relationship between lens accommodation and actin filament arrays in mammals and amphibians.
Dr. Rafferty received her M.S and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois in 1953 and 1958, respectively, under the tutelage of Dr. S. Meryl Rose. Following her dissertation work, Dr. Rafferty completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University, where she subsequently served as assistant professor in the department of anatomy in the School of Medicine. In 1970, she and her husband Keen moved to the Chicago area, where she joined the department of anatomy at Northwestern University Medical School. She was promoted to professor in 1976.
During her career, Dr. Rafferty published 55 journal articles and 31 abstracts. She served on study sections of the National Institutes of Health and was a member of the Vision Advisory Research Committee. Dr. Rafferty traveled the world giving invited talks in Great Britain (Guy’s Hospital Medical School, Nottingham University, Oxford University and Edinburgh University), East Germany, Holland, Spain, Canada, Japan, Australia, San Francisco, Finland, and Sweden.
Dr. Rafferty first came to the MBL in 1955 as a student in the Embryology course. She returned periodically to conduct research at the MBL beginning in 1988. Upon retirement from Northwestern in 1994, she moved her laboratory to MBL where she was a Senior Scientist and a member of the Corporation.
Dr. Rafferty and her husband long felt a love for the MBL and Woods Hole. She would have been particularly pleased that a lectureship in embryology has been established in her name.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
