Institute LeadershipAdministration Charles P. Emerson, Jr., Ph.D., Director Dorothy Syrigos, Administrative Assistant
Dr. Charles P. Emerson, Jr. has been Director of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute since 2003 as well as Senior Scientist. He received his A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia, where he initiated his research on skeletal muscle. He has held faculty positions at the University of Virginia as Commonwealth Professor of Biology, the Fox Chase Cancer Center as Senior Scientist, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as the Joseph Leidy Professor and Chair of Cell and Developmental Biology. He is an internationally recognized developmental biologist through his research on skeletal muscle development. His significant contributions include pioneering molecular work on the development of cell culture models to define gene regulatory mechanisms underlying skeletal muscle differentiation, and the development of cell-based gene transfer approaches that led to the identification of the muscle master regulatory genes and that continue to be used to identify stem cell regulatory genes. His recent work has focused on the functions of the muscle master regulatory genes and novel extracellular signaling regulators and their roles in the generation of the stem cells that form skeletal muscles in the embryo and that regenerate damaged adult muscles and on the developmental and genetic origins of muscle cancer stem cells in Hedgehog (Gorlin’s Syndrome) cancers. Dr. Emerson’s research program has been funded continuously over his career by the NIH, as well as by NSF, ACS, and MDA, and he has been the recipient of NIH Career Development and Merit Awards. In addition to his academic and research leadership roles, he also has been director of two NIH training grants for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Emerson currently is the Director of the BBRI-based Senator Paul D. Wellstone Cooperative Research Muscular Dystrophy Center as well as a lead Center investigator in studies to develop stem cell therapeutics to treat muscle injury and muscular dystrophy.
Henry Paulus, Ph.D., Deputy Director 617.658.7800
Dr. Henry Paulus is an enzymologist, who received his
B.A., B.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago, followed by
postdoctoral training at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University with
Nobel laureates Alexander Todd and Konrad Bloch, respectively. In 1961, he
joined the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Harvard Medical School, where he
initiated a very active research and teaching program leading to the rank of
Associate Professor. His research focused on the control of the synthesis of
essential amino acids in bacteria and led to the discovery of several novel
control mechanisms. In 1975, Dr. Paulus was offered the position of Senior
Scientist at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and he has remained in
this very stimulating and collegial research environment ever since, where at
times he also served as Deputy Director, Director, and Acting Director. His
current research focuses on the self-catalyzed rearrangement of proteins, known
as protein splicing, and he was instrumental in elucidating the biochemical
mechanism of this complex process. Protein splicing plays a critical role in
the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and also in certain cancers,
such as pancreatic and small-cell lung cancer, and in recent years, Dr. Paulus
has focused his research on the identification of protein splicing inhibitors as
potential therapeutic agents for TB and cancer.
Alan L. Kaye, Chief Financial & Administrative Officer
Patricia Brouillette, Human Resources Manager
Office of Technology Transfer
Institutional Advancement
Facilities Officers, Trustees, Trustees Emeriti, and Corporators
Scientific Advisory Board
Jeffrey J. Fredberg, Ph.D.
Jonathan Garlick, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Marsha A. Moses, Ph.D.
Terence Partridge, Ph.D.
Lawrence M. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Ralph Scully, M.B., B.S., Ph.D. Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Jennifer Van Eyk, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Kenneth Walsh, Ph.D.
Committee on ResearchCharles P. Emerson,Jr., Ph.D., Director and Senior Scientist
Markus Hardt, Ph.D., Scientist
Peter Jones, Ph.D., Principal Scientist
Paul Leavis, Ph.D., Senior Scientist
Jeffrey Miller, Ph.D., Senior Scientist
Sarah Wilcox-Adelman, Ph.D., Scientist |