Jan
Witkowski is currently Executive Director of the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a
Professor in the Watson School of Biological Sciences, the graduate school
program at Cold Spring Harbor.
He obtained his B.Sc. in Zoology at the University of
Southampton, UK, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the National Institute for
Medical Research, London, UK (Dr. William Brighton). He
carried out postdoctoral research on Duchenne
muscular dystrophy at the Royal Postgraduate Medical
School, Hammersmith
Hospital, London,
(Professor Victor Dubowitz) and at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota (Dr. Andrew
Engel.)
In 1984, Dr. Witkowski
went to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London to pursue research on oncogenes (Dr. Gordon Peters.) In 1986, he was invited to
join the Institute for Molecular Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston
(Dr. C. Thomas Caskey), where he ran a laboratory
performing DNA-based diagnosis of human genetic diseases.
Dr. Witkowski moved to
his present position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1987. As director of
the Banbury
Center, he is responsible
for the topics and organization of some 20 meetings each year. These cover
molecular and cell biology; genetics; biotechnology; and societal issues of
modern biology. Dr. Witkowski is also an editor on
the Image Archive on the American
Eugenics Movement and DNA from the Beginning
projects.
His special interests are human molecular
genetics, the interaction of science and society, and the history of modern
experimental biology. He has published many papers on these topics and is a
coauthor with Dr. James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, of
the book Recombinant DNA: Second Edition. Dr. Witkowski
has edited a collection of notable papers published by scientists at Cold Spring
Harbor, chosen to
illustrate research at the Laboratory between 1903 and 1969. Topics included in
Illuminating Life range from ecology through biophysics to molecular
genetics. He is preparing the third edition of Recombinant DNA.
Dr. Witkowski is on the
Faculty of the Watson School of
Biological Sciences, a former member of its Executive Committee (1999-2004)
and an instructor of the Scientific Ethics and Exposition course. He is a
member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the James A. Baker Veterinary
Research Institute (Cornell
University) and
Editor-in-Chief of Trends in Biochemical Sciences.