Dr. Jonathan Peled I had a wonderful time conducting my PhD thesis studies in the Department of Cell Biology, laboratory of Mathew Scharff. The collegial and inquisitive environment was terrific, and I always felt, as a student, my questions, my experiments, and my interest were everyone’s priority. Particularly, the shared equipment, an open-door policy that every lab had was nice. I remember going door to door, looking for reagents or equipment or expertise in some technique. This is also paired with a social camaraderie, including long poker sessions and qualifying oral-exam preparation drills at the chalkboard, thesis defense parties during which the graduates would autograph the pockmark leti in the ceiling tile by the champagne cork. Undoubtedly, my time in the Cell Biology department served as my formative scientific years and set me on the path of the rest of my career. jonathan (Tsoni) Peled, MSTP ‘10 Peled Laboratory @ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center As an example of the highly collaborative environment in the Department of Cell Biology, half of my thesis work ended up as an unplanned paper that began as a minor side project. My primary work was in Mathew Scharff’s lab where I was characterizing lymphomas that arise from germinal center B cells carrying mutations in the mismatch repair pathway. Hilda Ye was a lymphoma expert working on cyclins in B cells, which was largely unrelated; but through our conversations, I ended up collaborating with her. This blossomed into an entire project about the role of a particular cyclin in the formation of germinal centers, that ultimately grew into a first-author paper and half of my PhD thesis. It was a wonderful collaboration that was very valuable, and the key is that Hilda became a wonderful second thesis mentor to me, even though that was not originally the plan. The collegial and inquisitive environment was terrific, and I always felt, as a student, my questions, my experiments, and my interest were everyone’s priority. Jonathan (Tsoni) Peled, MD PhD After graduating with the PhD, I completed my clinical rotations, studied internal medicine at Massachusets General Hospital, and then returned to New York for a Heme/Onc fellowship at Memorial Sloan Ketering Cancer Center. At MSKCC, I stayed on as a junior, clinical faculty member, and recently launched my independent lab, where I study the microbiome and cancer immunotherapy, while also atending on the bone marrow transplantation service. Hopefully, in this current role, I will continue to carry on the tradition that I learned at Einstein: using my clinical work to guide my research, and vice versa, while also helping to train the next generation of physician scientists.
