Spotlight

Marie Carter-Dubois serves as vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) as of September 1, 2025. As Salk’s CFO, Carter-Dubois leads all aspects of the Institute’s financial operations, including accounting, grants administration, procurement, budgeting, financial planning and analysis, and investment management. Coming from UC San Diego, where she served as associate vice chancellor for finance and administration and CFO for Academic Affairs, Carter-Dubois will serve as a key member of Salk’s Executive Leadership Team, advising them and the Board of Trustees on long-range financial strategy and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the Institute’s scientific mission.

World-renowned plant biologist Lucia Strader, PhD, joined Salk as a professor and holder of the Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology in October 2025. Strader studied agronomy at Louisiana State University before earning her PhD in molecular plant sciences at Washington State University and completing her postdoctoral training in biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University. Strader is an internationally recognized leader in plant hormone biology and was previously based at Duke University. Her work will help Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative design more resilient crops that can thrive in changing environments.

Immunologist Jamie Blum, PhD, joined Salk’s NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis as an assistant professor in September 2025. Blum earned her PhD in molecular nutrition from Cornell University and completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University, where she combined immunology, plant biology, and chemical engineering to study the immune system’s interaction with food at the single-cell level. Her lab will investigate why certain foods trigger allergic reactions while others are more readily tolerated by our immune systems.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected Salk neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, PhD, professor and holder of the Francis Crick Chair at Salk, to receive a 2025 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. The prestigious award is given to scientists proposing exceptionally creative, high-risk, high-reward research. The NIH award will provide $3.5 million over the next five years to support his lab’s latest project, which will use advanced computational techniques to help neuroscientists better understand and treat memory issues in mental disorders such as schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Cancer biologist Tony Hunter, PhD, American Cancer Society Professor and holder of the Renato Dulbecco Chair at Salk, was recognized by the National Foundation for Cancer Research for his discovery of a molecular switch that controls cells’ growth and division, known as tyrosine phosphorylation, which led to the development of more than 80 FDA-approved cancer drugs. The prize celebrates scientists whose “work has contributed to cancer prevention, diagnosis, or treatment and has had a lasting impact on understanding cancer, holding the promise of improving or saving the lives of cancer patients.” He will receive $30,000 and attend a gala held in his honor.

Each year, STAT News recognizes inspiring scientists who are blazing new trails and answering some of the biggest questions in science and medicine. Emily Manoogian, PhD, is a staff scientist in the lab of Satchidananda Panda, PhD, where she studies time-restricted eating, circadian rhythms, metabolic diseases, and cancer. The questions Manoogian works to answer should help increase the human healthspan, the period of our lifetimes during which we remain in good health.

Molecular biologist Diana Hargreaves, PhD, professor and holder of the J.W. Kieckhefer Foundation Chair at Salk, was named a 2025 All-Star Translational Award Program grantee in recognition of the exceptional success of her previous V Foundation grant in 2016. She and her clinical collaborator, Gregory Botta, MD, PhD, an associate professor at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, will receive $1 million to advance a new project to improve immunotherapy—a treatment that utilizes the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer—in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Immunologist and microbiologist Deepshika Ramanan, PhD, received this distinction, given to early-career leaders in the biomedical sciences whose research holds exceptional promise for revealing new pathways to advance human health. Ramanan is one of seven scientists the Rita Allen Foundation named to its 2025 class of Scholars, who will each receive grants of up to $110,000 annually for up to five years. Ramanan will use the funds to propel her research on the communication between the gut and mammary glands to understand how maternal immunity is transferred through milk.

Plant biologist Wolfgang Busch, PhD, professor and holder of the Hess Chair in Plant Science at Salk, was honored as an “exceptional scientist whose innovative ideas and approaches involve interdisciplinary collaboration and apply a broad range of methods, building bridges across the boundaries of the sciences and humanities.” With support from the NOMIS Award, Busch will now lead a five-year research project called Mapping the Root Perceptome, which aims to explore all the chemical surroundings that roots can perceive. The goal is to help scientists develop plants with enhanced resilience to changing conditions, improved nutrient uptake, increased carbon storage in the soil, and perhaps even engineered root systems tailored for specific environments.

Molecular biologist Joseph Ecker, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, professor, and holder of the International Council Chair in Genetics at Salk, was awarded the 2026 Barbara McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies from the Maize Genetics Cooperation, a global organization of maize geneticists and breeders. The prize honors “the most outstanding plant scientists working on both genetics and genomics in the present era.”

The Salk Institute mourns the loss of molecular biologist and Nobel laureate David Baltimore, PhD, a former research associate and longtime Nonresident Fellow at the Institute. “David was a major force in uniting the disciplines of virology and molecular biology, always working at the cutting edge and leading both fields in new and important directions,” says Salk President Gerald Joyce, MD, PhD. “His insights have deeply informed modern immunology and cancer biology, and we are grateful for his lasting impact on the Salk Institute and broader scientific community.”