2000 and beyond – The Past is Prologue

The Division achieved its 75th anniversary in 2003 with a total of almost 700 faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows and staff. The nonretired faculty (in 2003) is 38 professors of various ranks, not including several active emeritus professors. There are nearly 100 undergraduate majors, and over 100 graduate students in Biology Division laboratories, largely from the Biology, Biochemistry and Computation and Neural Sciences options. There are more than 200 postdoctoral scholars, senior postdoctoral scholars, senior research fellows and senior research associates, and more than 250 staff members.

Already in the decade there have been five new appointments to the faculty, David Chan as assistant professor in 2000, Athanasios Siapas as assistant professor in 2001, Michael Dickinson as full professor in 2002, Grant Jensen as assistant professor in 2002, and Michael Elowitz as assistant professor in 2003. Siapas and Dickinson are joint appointments between Biology and Engineering and Applied Science, and represent the growing influence of a new Bioengineering option. There are already departures, as well, Charles Brokaw retiring (formally, at least) in 2000, James Bower having left in 2001, and John Abelson retiring in 2002. There has also been a change in leadership, with Mel Simon completing his term as chair and Elliot Meyerowitz becoming the new Division Chair in July, 2000.

A new building for the biological sciences, the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, was completed and occupied in September, 2002. Seven laboratories from the Biology Division (including Chan and Jensen, who were hired to help occupy the new building, and our newest assistant professor, Michael Elowitz, a computational biologist who arrived in mid-2003) have moved there, as well as a lab from the Chemistry Division and one from Engineering. Searches are in progress for additional assistant professors to strengthen the Division in the areas of genetics of behavior, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and genetics. One additional promising feature of the new century is the undergraduate program – in 2003 42 freshmen declared biology majors, indicating that interest in biology among Caltech students is reaching an all-time high.