ARNOLD LEVINE TO JOIN FACULTY OF INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON, N.J. - July 28, 2004 - The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Arnold J. Levine, currently a visiting professor in its School of Natural Sciences, to a Professorship in the School from July 1. Levine’s research has centered on the causes of cancer in humans and animals. In 1979, Levine and others discovered the p53 tumor suppressor protein, a molecule that inhibits tumor development, and whose disruption is associated with many human cancers, including cancer of the breast, lung, liver, skin, prostate, bladder, cervix, and colon. He has helped to determine national research priorities as chair of the National Institutes of Health Commission on AIDS Research and the National Academies Cancer Policy Board.

At the Institute, Levine has established the Center for Systems Biology, which concentrates on research at the interface of molecular biology and the physical sciences. Research is conducted in the Center on genetics and genomics, polymorphisms and molecular aspects of evolution, signal transduction pathways and networks, stress responses, and pharmacogenomics in cancer biology.

Peter Goddard, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, comments, "We are delighted to welcome to the Faculty of the Institute a scientist who has made such notable contributions to both basic and applied biological research. Under Professor Levine’s leadership, the Center for Systems Biology will continue research in close collaboration with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Lewis-Sigler Center for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, and BioMaPS Institute at Rutgers University, as well as such industrial partners as IBM, Siemens Corporate Research, Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Merck & Co." 

Levine was on the faculty of the Biochemistry Department of Princeton University from1968 to 1979, when he became chair and professor in the Department of Microbiology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, School of Medicine. Returning to Princeton University in 1984, he was named Harry C. Wiess Professor in the Life Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology, a position he held until 1998. He chaired the Department between 1984 and 1996.

He was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rockefeller University in New York City from 1998 to 2002, as well as Heilbrunn Professor of Cancer Biology and laboratory head until joining the Institute in 2002.

Levine is a graduate of Harpur College, State University of New York, and earned his PhD in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Subsequently he was postdoctoral fellow of the Public Health Service at the California Institute of Technology. He holds honorary degrees from, among other institutions, Rider University, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris.

The recipient of many honors, among his most recent are: the Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Biomedical Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (2000); the Keio Medical Science Prize of the Keio University Medical Science Fund, Japan (2000); the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2001); and the Award for Basic Research from the Surgical Society of Oncologists (2003).

Levine is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the Academy’s Institute of Medicine; he is also the author or coauthor of over 300 scientific papers, as well as a book, Viruses (1993).

He has served as board member or adviser to numerous scientific organizations and educational institutions, among them the N.J. Biotechnology Institute, the American Cyanamid Corporation, the SUNY Health Sciences Center in Brooklyn, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Weizmann Institute, the Huntsman Cancer Center of the University of Utah, and the Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne, Switzerland.