From snakes to Stockholm

 

Roderick MacKinnon ’78

Major: Biochemistry
Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Professor of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Rockefeller University
New York

Rod MacKinnonWhen Roderick MacKinnon was a child, he explored the woods near his home, collecting rocks and snakes and using a microscope to study pond microorganisms and blades of grass. But he didn’t proclaim science as his passion until reaching Brandeis.

“Brandeis,” he has written, “was an eye-opening experience for me. The classes tended to be small, intense and stimulating. I chose biochemistry as a major and a newly arrived assistant professor named Chris Miller for my honors thesis adviser. I could see he was a man having lots of fun in his life, and it was inspiring to me.”

After graduating, MacKinnon earned an M.D. from Tufts, but he later returned to Miller’s Brandeis laboratory for postdoctoral studies. Now a professor of neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University, he received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for increasing our understanding of ion protein channels, which, in mentor Miller’s words, constitute “the basic molecular hardware of the nervous system [and are] responsible for making electricity in nerve cells, and therefore underlie all thought, sensation, and emotion.”


A mathematical fish in water

 

Bonnie Berger ’83

Major: Computer science
Professor of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Mass.
 
Bonnie BergerWhen a Miami high school teacher told Bonnie Berger there was no future for women in math, she dropped calculus. But while pursuing a psychology major at Brandeis, she had to master quantitative skills.

“One day I was sitting in the computer lab, programming Fortran, and I thought, ‘What am I doing as a psych major?’” she says. Recognizing her math ability, Brandeis faculty helped her make up her deficit in preparation, providing extra readings, projects and encouragement. 

“As a computer science major, I was a fish in water,” she says.

Since 1992, Berger has taught in the math department at MIT, where she is a full professor and the first woman ever to get tenure. Head of MIT’s Computation and Biology group, she leads the design of algorithms to gain biological insights from medical research data. Potential applications include drug design and disease prevention.

A fellow of the distinguished Association for Computer Machinery, Berger is also a recipient of the prestigious Dayhoff Award, given by the Biophysical Society to recognize the top woman biophysics researcher each year.