Brian Chait, D.Phil., is the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York and head of the Laboratory for Mass Spectrometry and Gaseous Ion Chemistry. He specializes in the development and use of mass spectrometry as a tool for investigating a variety of biological and biochemical phenomena.
Michael Rout, Ph.D., is the George and Ruby deStevens Professor at the Rockefeller University and head of the Laboratory of Cellular and Structural Biology. He uses biochemical, biophysical, and structural approaches to characterize macromolecular assemblies, with an emphasis on the nuclear pore complex, a key part of the pathway that relays information between the nucleus and cytoplasm. His goal is to further develop proteomic technologies that will enable the community to assemble detailed, dynamic representations of the interactions in the cell.
J. Cesar Cardenas earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chile, where he studied the mechanism that regulated nuclear Ca2+ under Dr. Enrique Jaimovich’s mentoring. Then he moved to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School where he explored the nuclear localization 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (InsP3R) Ca2+channel by using high resolution electron microscopy and cryofracture as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Clara Franzini-Armstrong. Motivate in gain a better understanding of the physiological role of the InsP3R he joined Dr. Kevin Foskett’s lab also at UPENN, where he developed a strong interest in the regulation of cellular metabolism and bioenergetics by Ca2+. He was the first to show that basal constitutive low-level Ca2+ signaling by the InsP3R, is essential to maintain the sufficient mitochondrial NADH production to support oxidative phosphorylation in resting cells. In the absence of this calcium signaling, cells become metabolically compromised and a pro-survival AMPK-dependent mTOR-independent autophagy is turned on. He joined the Department of Anatomy and Cell Developmental Biology Program at the Institute of Biomedical Science of the University of Chile School of Medicine in March of 2012.
Dr. Bloch is a Professor in the Department of Physiology in the Graduate Program in Life Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Maryland, (Baltimore, MA).
Pascal-Nicolas Bernatchez, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia.