Coleen Murphy from the Dept of Molecular Biology at Princeton will tell us about “Slowing the Ticking Clock: What we can learn about aging and memory from C. elegans“ at the first Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Science Forum on Wednesday, March 9 at 4:00 pm in Gerstenzang 121. The focus of her research is on understanding the genes that regulate longevity, using C. elegans as a model system. Coleen performed her Ph.D. thesis research with Jim Spudich at Stanford where she studied myosin motors and then went on to a post doctoral fellowship with Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF where she began studying aging. Since starting her own lab at Princeton, Coleen has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including a Pew Scholar Award, a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar Award, and an NIH Director’s Innovator Award. Her lab’s most recent work showed that TGF-β and insulin signaling regulates reproductive aging. In addition, her lab has also recently been looking into the connection between longevity mutants and memory in C. elegans
About the Forum: Ruth Ann Perlmutter has been a longtime friend of Brandeis University. In 1969, Nathan Perlmutter became vice president of development at Brandeis during the presidency of Morris Abrams. Perlmutter left Brandeis to become the National Director of the Anti Defamation League. Together the Perlmutters were leaders in the interfaith movement and civil rights debates for which activities Nathan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom shortly before his death in 1987. Mrs. Perlmutter earned her B.A. from the University of Denver and her masters degree in sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit. She is a sculptor and painter in her own right and currently lives in Prescott, Arizona.
