CSHL was ranked #1 in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters based on its Essential Science Indicators database covering the period between January 1999 and October 2009. This ranking reflects citations per paper (impact).

 

 

 

In the National Research Council (NRC)’s latest assessment of 5,000 doctoral programs across 62 fields at 212 universities nationwide, CSHL’s Watson School of Biological Sciences was ranked between 3rd and 17th across 20 cumulative categories. In the category of citations per publication, the school ranked #1.

 

 

 

CSHL President Bruce Stillman won the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for his transformative work on DNA replication in which he identified key molecular players and principles involved in the duplication of genetic material in animal and human cells. The Horwitz Prize has been awarded annually since 1967 by Columbia University, for outstanding basic research in biology and biochemistry. Forty-two of the 82 awardees, to date, have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

Assistant Professor Adam Kepecs was named a finalist for the Eppendorf and Science Prize for his essay "Are you certain? The neural basis for decision confidence."  The award recognizes outstanding international neurobiological research by a young, early-career scientist, as described in a 1,000-word essay based on research performed within the last three years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yaniv Erlich, who performed this thesis work in Professor Gregory Hannon’s lab and defended his PhD in March, was one of 13 recipients of the prestigious Harold Weintraub Award. The winners were chosen from a global list of nominees based on the quality, originality and significance of their graduate work.

 

 

 

 

 

Three CSHL investigators are among 24 scientists included in Genome Technology’s fifth annual “Young Investigators” list. Yaniv Erlich and Nicholas Navin, who both completed their doctoral work at CSHL this year, and Assistant Professor Michael Schatz were all named to the list as “rising stars” in the field of systems biology.

 

 

 

 

 

For the ninth consecutive year, CSHL received Charity Navigator's coveted 4-star rating for sound fiscal practices, placing CSHL among the most fiscally responsible of more than 1.5 million philanthropic organizations that currently exist in America.

 

 

 

 

 

The DNA Learning Center’s 3D Brain “app” which can be downloaded for free from iTunes, is currently ranked #7 among educational apps on the iPhone and is the #1 educational app on iPad. The app features an interactive 3-D model of the brain, with 29 structures that can be rotated in three-dimensional space. Each structure has information on brain disorders, brain damage, case studies, and links to modern neuroscience research.






Research performed by CSHL Professor Thomas Gingeras and others elsewhere yielded one of the top-10 "Insights of the Decade" as judged in December 2010 by the journal Science.  Gingeras and collaborators demonstrated that over 90% of the human genome is transcribed as RNA, thus helping to focus attention on the unexpectedly vast world of non-coding RNAs, whose functions remain largely unknown.








A runner-up for Science's "Breakthrough of the Year" for 2010 was publication of the full nuclear genome of Neandertal, based on highly corrupted samples nearly 40,000 years old.  The feat was made possible in part by important innovations in genome sequencing, including "array capture re-sequencing," developed by postdoc Emily Hodges and CSHL Professor and HHMI Investigator Gregory Hannon.  The technique was especially useful in work that revealed that only a few dozen protein-coding genes differ in Neandertals and modern humans.