Spotlight

The Salk Institute welcomed several new faculty members and recognized a key promotion.

Every medical advance begins with a question no one has yet answered. This spring, the Salk Institute welcomed several new faculty members and recognized a key promotion, and each scientist brings a distinct set of questions that will deepen Salk’s foundational research in cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, epigenetics, and artificial intelligence.

Thales “PapaG” Papagiannakopoulos, PhD, will join Salk as a professor in September 2026, coming from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. His central question: How do tumors adapt when threatened? In addition to multiplying, cancer cells shift how they use energy, reshape the immune environment around them, and even communicate with the nervous system in ways that drive symptoms like fatigue and weight loss. In two recent studies published in Nature, PapaG’s team showed that disrupting specific proteins reduced lung and pancreatic cancer in laboratory experiments, pointing toward promising new therapeutic strategies. At Salk, PapaG will add momentum to the Institute’s National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center and forge new collaborations across the Institute’s cancer, metabolism, immunology, and
neuroscience programs.

Ian Guldner, PhD, will join Salk as an assistant professor later in 2026, with his recruitment made possible by a gift from the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund. His question has profound implications for an aging population: What goes wrong inside brain cells years before Alzheimer’s disease becomes apparent? Guldner studies the cellular machinery that keeps neurons healthy over a lifetime and investigates how the brain’s immune cells change as we age. In a first-author paper published this year in Nature, he described how aging causes certain proteins from neurons to accumulate inside the brain’s resident immune cells, a finding that opens a new window onto the earliest stages of cognitive decline.

Julie Law, PhD, has been promoted to full professor in recognition of her discoveries in epigenetics, the chemical modifications that organize DNA and regulate which genes are active without altering the genetic code itself. Her most recent work revealed that certain proteins and DNA sequences can direct entirely new epigenetic patterns, a significant conceptual advance. Law also explores how plants can be engineered to better withstand environmental stress, contributing to Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative.

Talmo Pereira, PhD, has joined the faculty as an assistant professor after serving as a Salk Fellow. A computational neuroscientist, Pereira builds AI tools that analyze how living things move as a window into how they work. His open-source software, SLEAP, is now used by tens of thousands of researchers in more than 90 countries studying everything from organelles to whale sharks.

Together, these four scientists embody what makes Salk unique: a community where curiosity drives the work, collaboration is the default, and the most fundamental questions are always worth asking.

Hallac brings extensive experience across technology, finance, and philanthropy to the Board of Trustees.

Sarah Wolf Hallac has joined the Salk Institute’s Board of Trustees, bringing extensive experience across technology, finance, and philanthropy. Hallac is an advisor to VectoIQ and consultant to BlackRock on major philanthropic initiatives and has built a career supporting innovation-driven organizations and emerging technologies. Her leadership and commitment to advancing strong institutions will help support Salk’s mission to drive transformative scientific discovery.

“Sarah understands that enduring discovery depends on strong institutions, and that makes her an exceptional addition to Salk.”

Gerald Joyce, Salk President

Joyce recognized for both his scientific leadership and the global impact of Salk’s foundational research.

Salk President Gerald Joyce, MD, PhD, was elected to the American Philosophical Society, the nation’s oldest learned society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. Joyce, a pioneer in evolutionary and molecular biology, has spent his career exploring the origins and evolution of life while advancing technologies that continue to shape modern medicine and biotechnology. His election recognizes both his scientific leadership and the global impact of Salk’s foundational research.

Shadel and Sharpee recognized for their distinguished scientific and social accomplishments.

Salk molecular biologist Gerald Shadel, PhD, and neuroscientist Tatyana Sharpee, PhD, were elected as American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2025 Fellows. The honor recognizes scientists with distinguished scientific and social accomplishments, and AAAS Fellows become national and global science spokespersons for the rest of their lives. Shadel and Sharpee are among nearly 500 scientists, engineers, and innovators who have been elected as 2025 Fellows. At Salk, they join the ranks of seven other faculty members who are also AAAS Fellows.

Salk scientist Terrence Sejnowski, PhD, has received the inaugural Scientific Breakthrough Award from the World Digital Technology Academy alongside Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton for their foundational work on Boltzmann machines, an early architecture that helped pave the way for modern artificial intelligence and machine learning. Sejnowski’s decades of research have shaped fields ranging from brain science to deep learning, reinforcing Salk’s role at the forefront of transformative scientific innovation.