Introductions? I'm a scientist and parent, a writer and spouse, living in New York City. I spent my first twenty years in the San Francisco bay area, only to transplant myself and grow in Boston for the next ten. My family and I plan to make it back to New England someday, to an unknown farmhouse with too many trees and old sunshined floorboards and things to fix. For now, we live in Brooklyn. Life here pretty much epitomizes the cliche of like and dislike: art everywhere and the crush of people displacing trees and dirt and air, incredible convenience and neighbors loud enough to make your furniture tremble as you try to sleep, excitement and a gradual weariness.
My days are spent, in large part, thinking about cancer mechanisms and therapy. I am a senior scientist in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the city's big academic cancer center and hospital. Biology was one of my first passions and wonders, fueled by an addiction to the crazy amazing details of biological life. I feel lucky to do the work I do.
As for particulars, I am a member of Charles Sawyers' group at MSKCC. I work on genetic and genomic alterations in cancer and the role these alterations play in transcriptional regulation and signaling. I was previously a post-doc in Todd Golub's lab at the Harvard-MIT Broad Institute. I focused on hormone and kinase signaling in cancer biology from a genomic angle there. I did my doctoral work on the basic mechanisms of gene expression, particularly the integration of early mRNA synthesis, processing, and transport events. I spent those graduate years in Pam Silver's lab at Harvard Medical School. My cv provides the minutiae for the bored or erudite.
The heart of my family is my lovely spouse, Kim, and young kid, Tristan. Kim and I fully intend to look back on our lives as the romance of the century. Just wait, we have our rocking chairs all picked out. As for Tristan, who knows how he will look back on us? All I know is that being a parent really is transformative. It staggers me that something so very common can be so extraordinary.
In my meager free time, I generally have a book in my hands. I try to catch modern dance, museums, clouds from park blankets, and comfortable places to stay in the middle of remoteness. I hold onto my sanity almost exclusively through matrimony and large quantities of chocolate. I like to travel, light and cheap. I am jonesing for travel while my kid is too little to backpack through much of the inhabitable world, but just wait until he is big enough to carry gear for me. My life is also political and politicized. There's no getting around that, and I wouldn't want to anyway.
Drop me a line if you want to get in touch.
