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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Stavros Lomvardas

Stavros Lomvardas

2014 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Location

New York, NY

Title

Professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and neuroscience; Principal Investigator, Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute

Area(s) of Research

Anatomy; DNA

Education

Columbia University (postdoc, PhD); University of Crete (BS, molecular biology)

Country of Birth

Greece

Tags
anatomy biomedical science Columbia University greece olfactory sensory perception
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Stavros Lomvardas sitting in front of a microscope and other lab equipment.

Stavros Lomvardas grew up inspired by what he calls “the highest concentration of poets, writers, sculptors, philosophers, and scientists in Greece,” but he was most inspired by his own father, a successful dentist with a passion for biology. “He would always bring me books and talk to me about experiments and help me to design my own. So from a very young age I knew I wanted to be a scientist.”

Lomvardas began his studies at the University of Crete, where he felt “the unlimited joy of doing research in biology” even as he came to recognize the long-term limitations of going forward with it in Greece. Accepted into the graduate program at Columbia University, the intellectual freedom he experienced there was intoxicating. He joined the Dimitris Thanos lab when a growing appreciation of the importance of chromatin in gene regulation presented many opportunities. For his postdoctoral work, he transferred to the lab of Richard Axel — a life-changing experience, which instilled in him the goal “to conduct science the way he taught me.”

Toward the end of his postdoc, Lomvardas started working on DNA methylation and other epigenetic modifications of olfactory receptors. He plans to continue his research in this vein at his own lab at the University of California, San Francisco, where he moved in 2006 and is now an associate professor on the Anatomy faculty. Exciting findings in his lab have already opened new experimental directions, he says.

Lomvardas is also venturing in a new direction, taking him toward the application of scientific knowledge to treat disease — specifically, Rett syndrome. The research he’s done, investigating the MeCP2 protein and its role in this rare genetic disorder that affects the way the brain develops, primarily in girls, represents a major shift in attitude for the geneticist.

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Young Investigator Award for Research in Olfaction (2014)
  • EUREKA Award (2010)
  • McKnight Scholar Award (2010)
  • New Investigator Award, Rett Syndrome Research Trust (2009)
  • NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2009)
  • Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship
  • Harold M. Weintraub Award (2002)
Tags
anatomy biomedical science Columbia University greece olfactory sensory perception

Jury Members

2014 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Heran Darwin

Associate Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Laurie Dempsey

Senior Editor, Nature Immunology

Peter Palese

Professor and Chair, Microbiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Jan Vilcek

Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Leslie Vosshall

Chemers Family Associate Professor, The Rockefeller University

Nicholas Wade

Science Department, The New York Times

Jedd Wolchok

Director of Immunotherapy, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
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