The rockefeller university

Two postdoctoral researchers at Rockefeller University, Nicolas E. Buchler and Edo L. Kussell, were awarded 2006 Career Awards at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, it was announced today. Buchler and Kussell each will receive $500,000 to foster their development and productivity early in their careers and help them make the critical transition to becoming independent investigators.

The CASI awards, as they are known, are designed to encourage research at the interface between the physical/computational sciences and the biological sciences and to recognize the vital role cross-trained scientists play in furthering biomedical research. Buchler and Kussel were among ten recipients of the award nationally.

Buchler, a fellow in the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics headed by Mitchell Feigenbaum, received a CASI award to study gene duplication and the evolution of function in regulatory networks. Kussell is a postdoctoral fellow in Stanislas Leibler’s Laboratory of Living Matter, and studies the evolution of microbial physiologies.

Both labs are part of Rockefeller’s Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, directed by Feigenbaum, in whichscientists work on problems at the interface of the physical and biological sciences. Much of their work aims to understand how physical laws govern the operation of the biochemical machinery and the processing of information inside cells. Current research projects at the center range from bioinformatics to molecular biophysics to neuroscience.