The program project group met with external advisory board (EAB) members at the Johnson Center, Woods Hole MA, September 2004. Left to right (both rows): Jay Dunlap (EAB), Vincent Cassone, Jennifer Loros (EAB), Mark Zoran, Susan Golden, Terry Thomas, Deborah Bell-Pedersen, Steve Reppert (EAB), David Earnest
Director, Paul Hardin, Texas A&M University
Dr. Hardin, John W. Lyons Jr. ’59 Chair and Professor of Biology at TAMU, is internationally recognized as an authority on molecular clock mechanisms and their control of rhythmic outputs. As a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University he discovered the first circadian feedback loop in gene expression - regulation of period (per) mRNA cycling by PER protein in Drosophila - which laid the mechanistic framework for circadian timekeeping in all eukaryotes. His subsequent research has defined sequences and factors that control circadian transcription, interlocking feedback loops within the timekeeping mechanism, and circadian regulation of the olfactory system in Drosophila. For his contributions to the field of biological rhythms research, Dr. Hardin won the Aschoff-Honma Prize from the Honma Life Science Foundation in Japan in 2003. He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biological Rhythms since 2005 (through 2009), and was secretary of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms from 2002-2004.
Susan S. Golden, Texas A&M University
Dr. Golden, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology at TAMU, is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of circadian rhythms in cyanobacteria, the only prokaryotes in which such biological rhythms have been demonstrated. Beginning with her predoctoral work at the University of Missouri with Louis Sherman, and through postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago with Robert Haselkorn, she has led the development of genetic tools for cyanobacteria. Her research emp
loys genetic, genomic, and biochemical approaches to understand the mechanism of circadian timing in the model cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942. Dr. Golden was a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms from 2000-2002. She has also held leadership roles in the field of photosynthesis based on her work on light-regulated photosynthesis genes in cyanobacteria. She has been an editor of the Journal of Bacteriology since 1996 (through 2006), and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2000.
Vincent M. Cassone, Texas A&M University
Dr. Cassone's Ph.D. research with Michael Menaker at the Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, led to the neuroendocrine loop model for avian circadian organization, which has since been applied to mammals and humans. He conducted postdoctoral research in neuroanatomy with Robert Moore (S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook) and on the effects of melatonin on rat circadian systems and marsupial circadian organization with Stuart Armstrong (LaTrobe Research Fellowship, LaTrobe University, Australia). He was a Research Assistant Professor at Stony Brook until 1988, when he joined the Department of Biology at TAMU. Here, he helped create the Interdisciplinary Faculty of Neuroscience and served as its Chair from 1996-2000. He was selected as a University Faculty Fellow in 2000. He is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Biology. Dr. Cassone developed several key courses, including BIOL601, Biological Clocks. Among his many service positions, he was the program chair for the meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms that was held June 2004.
Internal Advisory Board
Dr. Christopher Colenda, Professor of Psychiatry and Dean of the College of Medicine in the Texas A&M University System Health Sciences Center.
Dr. Colenda's research expertise is in the area of geriatric psychiatry. At the national level, Dr. Colenda has served as Chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Aging, and is currently a member of the Board and Treasurer for the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. He is also a member of the Council of Healthcare Systems and Finance for the American Psychiatric Association, and serves as vice-chairman of the Geriatric Psychiatry test-writing committee for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Paul Lindahl is a Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program. Dr. Lindahl is well known for his work on the assembly and function of organometallic reaction centers used in biological catalysis, and the design of gene regulatory networks through computational systems biology methods. His is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, and has served on numerous NIH grant review panels.
Dr. James Sacchettini, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and of Chemistry.
Dr. Sacchettini earned his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Washington University in St. Louis (1987), where he conducted postdoctoral research from 1987 to 1989. He then moved to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY, where he rose to Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry. He joined the faculty of TAMU in 1996, where he holds the Wolfe-Welch Chair in Science in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, with a joint appointment in Chemistry. He is Director of the Center for Structural Biology, a part of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology.
Dr. Stephen H. Safe, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology.
Dr. Safe, who received his D.Phil. at Oxford University, is an internationally recognized toxicologist, particularly in the area of environmental toxins and endocrine disruptors. He has received notable awards, including the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal, the Royal Society for Chemistry Award for Health, Safety or Environmental Chemistry, and the Sigma Xi Excellence in Research Award. He is the Sid Kyle Chair of Toxicology.
External Advisory Board
Dr. Jay C. Dunlap, Professor and Head of the Department of Genetics at Dartmouth Medical School.
Dr. Dunlap is a world-renowned molecular biologist whose pioneering studies of the frequency gene led to a molecular model for the FRQ-based circadian oscillator in the fungus Neurospora crassa. Dr. Dunlap received his Ph.D. at Harvard University, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and is recipient of numerous awards, including the Damon Runyon - Walter Winchell Memorial Fellowship in Cancer Research, the Honma International Prize for Biological Rhythms Research, the NIMH Senior Scientist Award, and a MERIT Award from NIGMS.
Dr. Daniel Forger is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. Dr. Forger is a leader in developing mathematical models that both describe and predict molecular interactions within the circadian timekeeping mechanisms of Drosophila and mammals. His work revealed the molecular basis of short period mutations in the conserved timekeeping component casein kinase 1 epsilon, which has critical implications for the development of drugs to treat disorders of the circadian timekeeping mechanism.
Dr. Jeffrey C. Hall, Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. He was instrumental in many of the molecular biological advances in the field of biological clocks, having been the co-discoverer of the molecular nature of the clock gene period (per) in Drosophila melanogaster. His current research continues to pursue the molecular basis of biological rhythms and behavior, and the entrainment of biological rhythms to light cycles. Among his many honors, Dr. Hall is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Jennifer Loros, Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at Dartmouth College. Dr. Loros is widely known for her research on the molecular biology of the circadian clock in Neurospora crassa. Of particular importance is her research identifying "clock-controlled genes." Her work pioneered investigation of molecular output pathways following the discovery of the frequency (frq) locus.
She was awarded "Aschoff's Rule" at the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms 1996 Meeting, an honor within the circadian field, and received an NSF Creativity Award in 1998.
Dr. Michael Menaker, Commonwealth Professor of Biology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Menaker’s pioneering work focuses on how retinal and extraretinal photoreceptors in mammals, reptiles and birds regulate circadian and photoperiodic phenomena and how central pacemakers coordinate oscillators in peripheral tissues. He has received numerous awards including the Peter C. Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine, the Virginia’s Outstanding Scientists and Industrialists Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Steven M. Reppert, Professor of Neuroscience and Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine in Worcester, MA. Dr. Reppert is a world leader in the diverse areas of molecular genetics of biological clocks, reproductive function, and butterfly migration. He was the first to isolate and clone the melatonin receptors and has been instrumental in the area of comparative genomics in the biological clocks field.
Lily Bartoszek,
Clocks Program Assistant
Lily, who received a BA from TAMU and an MLIS from UT Austin, worked as Susan Golden’s Journal of Bacteriology editorial assistant from 1996-2006. Her idea of a really good time is doing volunteer proofreading for Project Gutenberg via PG’s Distributed Proofreaders a DP-Europe and DP Canada --53,000 pages, and counting! She was a NaNoWriMo winner in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.