About Speaker: Rolf Bodmer earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Neurobiology from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1983. Dr. Bodmer trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Neurobiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and also studied Molecular Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Biology in 1990 at the University of Michigan. There, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Biology in 1996, and then appointed to Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology in 2001. Dr. Bodmer joined Sanford Burnham Prebys in 2003, where he is a Professor in the Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases.

 

The Bodmer lab is interested in the molecular mechanisms of organ formation, how patterns are generated and how cells and tissue types assume their correct fates and functions. The Bodmer lab is pursuing this interest by studying the genetic functions and interactions that specify heart development and maintain heart performance in the Drosophila model, in the hope of elucidating basic principles in organogenesis and functionality.