Hope: Passing it On
Two-Way Education
John Kuriyan knows that students come to him to learn, but he sees their relationship as a two-way street. In fact, one of the reasons he joined the faculty at Berkeley was to teach undergraduates, as well as graduate students.
One of the country’s leading structural biologists, Kuriyan loves to work with students because “They aren’t afraid to try what you’re sure is impossible.”
“In science, important advances are always coming from surprising areas,” he says. “That’s especially true at the University, where you have bright, inquisitive minds who are willing to risk, willing to explore. Minds that aren’t restricted by what they already know.”
Kuriyan’s own pioneering work in the field of crystallography integrates both biology and chemistry. Already his findings have been key to understanding how a successful drug, Gleevec, works in a deadly form of leukemia. They also provide clues to overcoming resistance to the drug in some patients.
“But scientific inspiration doesn’t just stem from experiments in the laboratory,” he says. “It also springs from interactions with other scientists, of all ages.”
“The older we get, the more set in our ways we become, and students aren’t like that. As faculty, part of our job is to enrich them. But, inevitably, they enrich us too.”
Related Links
John Kuriyan, PhD, is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Chemistry. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.