October 2009 dispatch@sloankettering.edu

Nineteen undergraduates -- chosen from nearly 800 applicants -- learned what it means to be a member of our research community and to interact with fellow undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty in a laboratory environment. And ten young scientists joined our research community in pursuit of their PhDs.

Student research is recognized with the Chairman's Prize, Geoffrey Beene Graduate Student Fellowships, and Grayer Fellowships.

Online applications for fall 2010 and summer 2010 are now available.

Faculty member Charles L. Sawyers has been named a recipient of the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research.

Dinshaw J. Patel, a Member in Sloan-Kettering Institute's Structural Biology Program and incumbent of the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Chair of Experimental Therapeutics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences at its 146th annual meeting in April.

Faculty members Eric Holland and Alexandra Joyner have been elected members of the Institute of Medicine. Membership recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences.

Faculty member Jennifer A. Zallen, a member of the Developmental Biology Program in the Sloan-Kettering Institute, has been selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an Early Career Scientist.

Grégoire Altan-Bonnet of Sloan-Kettering Institute's Computational Biology Program and Songhai Shi of Sloan-Kettering Institute's Developmental Biology Program have been named the first two incumbents of the Bristol-Myers Squibb/James D. Robinson III Junior Faculty Chairs.

Structural biologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are collaborating with biochemists and cell biologists at The Rockefeller University to study how cells read genetic instructions imprinted on histones, DNA's packaging proteins.

A team of researchers led by Gerstner Sloan-Kettering faculty member Charles L. Sawyers has reported on the preclinical development and early results from the first clinical trial of a promising new drug for prostate cancer.

Michael Overholtzer has always been fascinated by how the world works, biologically and otherwise. A recent recruit to Sloan-Kettering Institute's Cell Biology Program, he pairs this curiosity with a dedication to finding new ways to control disease.