Thomas P. Maniatis elected to Board
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by LESLIE CHURCH
The university Board of Trustees elected Thomas P. Maniatis as its newest member at its spring meeting on March 14, bringing the total number of trustees to 43.
Dr. Maniatis is the Isidore S. Edelman Professor and Chairman of the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in chemistry and biology, and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University. After postdoctoral studies at Harvard University and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Dr. Maniatis held faculty positions at Harvard, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology.
“Tom is a preeminent scientist and scientific leader who will be a superb addition to our Board,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university’s president. “He already knows the university well through his outstanding service on the Board’s Committee on Scientific Affairs, and his perspective will serve to complement those of his fellow Board members, the majority of whom are leaders in business and finance.”
Dr. Maniatis is known for pioneering the development of gene cloning technology and its application to basic research and biotechnology. His research has impacted a broad spectrum of biomedical fields, from basic mechanisms of gene regulation to human genetic and inflammatory diseases. His laboratory is currently focused on molecular neuroscience, with interests in the role of single cell diversity in the brain and disease mechanisms in ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
In the past 30 years Dr. Maniatis has cofounded three biotechnology companies. He is currently a member of the board of directors of Acceleron Pharma and Constellation Pharma, and is a science partner of The Column Group, a biotechnology venture capital firm.
Dr. Maniatis is a member of the Jackson Laboratory Board of Trustees and has served on the Board of Trustees of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He currently serves on The Rockefeller University Committee on Scientific Affairs and is a former member of the Board of Scientific Consultants at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is a cofounder of the New York Genome Center and sits on its Executive Committee.
“Rockefeller is an extraordinary research institution, and I have many friends and colleagues on both the faculty and the Board,” says Dr. Maniatis. “I enjoy serving on the Rockefeller Committee on Scientific Affairs, and was honored to be asked to join the Board. I look forward to working with Marc and the other Board members to maintain Rockefeller’s preeminent position in the life sciences.”
