Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman Appointed

Yonsei Distinguished Professor

-Will Also Serve as a Member of Y-IBS Advisory Board

 

 

Prof. Randy Schekman, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, has been named a distinguished professor in the College of Life Science and Biotechnology at yonsei university as well as a member of Yonsei-IBS Advisory Board. He will serve in these capacities for the next three years, while also delivering several special lectures at the university.

 

First appointed as a professor in 1976, Prof. Shekman discovered the machinery for regulating vesicle traffic, a key cell transport system, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work. His research has created new possibilities for preventing and treating a number of immunological diseases and diabetes.

 

 

Currently, Shekman is a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at UC Berkeley, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator and editor of the openaccess online journal eLife.

 

Between September 28 and October 5, Prof. Schekman offered a series of lectures and attended a press conference. He addressed the state of basic research in Korea. “Korean scientists,” he said, “are under great pressure to publish papers in prestigious academic journals like Nature, Science, or Cell, which boast high impact factors. You should conduct creative research, rather than trendy research.”

 

Y-IBS Director Cheon explained: “In the future, we will seek advice from Professor Shekman on faculty appointments and promotions, research efficiency and evaluation, and other general areas. Through this, we expect the quality of research at the Y-IBS Institute and throughout Yonsei to significantly rise.”