Coinciding with Salk Institute Professor Marc Montminy’s 62nd birthday, colleagues past and present gathered from around the globe to honor him at an August 31 symposium. The event highlighted the progress of his lab and its research on understanding signaling molecules that help keep all the cells in the body on the same page when it comes to metabolism.
Salk President Rusty Gage (left) presented Marc Montminy with a photo of the Institute, signed by many who have worked alongside him.
Salk’s New ExplorersLike people, institutions move forward generation by generation. The Salk Institute’s first group of scientists included founder Jonas Salk, famous for developing the first effective and safe polio vaccine; and Renato Dulbecco, who demonstrated how viruses can cause cancer and who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975.
A matter of timeSalk Professor Satchidananda (Satchin) Panda runs his life like clockwork. Most mornings, if he’s not traveling, he wakes up around 6 a.m. without an alarm. One of the first things he does is go out to his backyard to check on his provisions for wild birds.
Driven to SucceedFrom once being a schoolboy sitting on the floor of a rural classroom with no electricity, to now being a breast cancer researcher in the laboratory of Geoffrey Wahl, Raj Giraddi’s deep and abiding interest in biological research has always driven him forward.
