Kristina Marie Hoke

B.S., The College of William and Mary
A Novel Phosphorylation Site in the Telomeric Protein TRF2 Is Regulated by the ATR Kinase and Plays a Role in Relieving Replication Stress at the Telomere
presented by Titia de Lange

Kristina Hoke is a biomedical fellow in our terrific Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. Program. Kristina and I met during the Frontiers course, a course for the M.D.-Ph.D. students in the first two years of their training. Already at that early stage, Kristina pointed out an inconsistency in my reasoning and this was the beginning of a great series of contributions Kristina made to the lab’s research progress. In addition to her own scientific discoveries, Kristina has been the lab’s editor for many years. She has carefully read and critiqued every single paper I wrote in the past five years. Unlike mine, Kristina’s prose is crisp, clean and uncluttered. Such lucid writing reflects a logical mind with strong analytical skills, which will serve her throughout life, no matter what aspect of the biomedical sciences she will choose in the end. Kristina’s imprint is noticeable in every one of the papers we published in the last few years and I can only hope that at this juncture, which marks the completion of my opportunity to train Kristina, conversely, she is now done training me.

Despite spending long hours in the lab on her experiments, Kristina has built up a vibrant life in New York City: Her Facebook page, an interesting source of information, lists 177 friends. More importantly, Kristina became a public figure in politics when she decided to take charge of the ailing organization of Manhattan Young Democrats, completely revitalizing and revamping its operation and working hard for local and national elections. She has now passed on her leadership position of what is now an extremely active and rejuvenated organization, so that she can fulfill her obligations in the clinic. She exemplifies one of the great and inspiring new movements in politics — young, highly motivated and involved voters. I wish her colleagues great success in fall.

As a leader in the NYC democratic community, Kristina gets blogged and I just want to quote one blog on her because, while it is not my style of commentary, I agree with what it says.
Here is the quote from the blog on a meeting of the Manhattan Young Democrats: “Kristina Hoke was looking good, looking in control. I admire her strength. You should go to one of her meetings. The entire hierarchy knows who calls the shots. She is sharp too. When I went online on her, some of the things that showed up were journal-style biological sciences articles. Maybe she is one of those rocket scientists.”

Well, Kristina is not a rocket scientist, but she is, in every way, a Rockefeller scientist and one we can be proud of.