Neuroscientist Peter Mombaerts Joins Rockefeller Faculty

An expert in the biology of detecting smell, Peter Mombaerts, M.D., Ph.D., joins the faculty at The Rockefeller University to direct the Laboratory of Vertebrate Developmental Neurogenetics. He will be an assistant professor.

In his research, Mombaerts explores how the nose detects thousands of odors and signals the brain. Using genetically engineered mice, he investigates how, during development, smell-sensitive nerve cells find their correct targets in the brain. He also studies the regulation of genes that contain the instructions for making and controlling the nerves used to smell.

Mombaerts comes to Rockefeller after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.

A native of Leuven, Belgium, Mombaerts received his medical degree, summa cum laude, from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1987. He received a graduate fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation in 1987 and a HHMI predoctoral fellowship in biological sciences in 1988. He earned a doctoral degree in biology in 1992 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he pursued postdoctoral studies until 1993, when he joined Columbia University. His graduate thesis in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Susumu Tonegawa, Ph.D., focused on the creation of mice genetically designed to have deficient immune systems. He is the author or coauthor of more than 25 scientific articles.