At the Center
CSHL is more than just the sum of its employees. It is also a gathering place for scientific visitors from around the world. Each year nearly 10,000 scientists converge on CSHL to participate in the Meetings & Course Program.
The Lab is unique for its singular focus on Biology, from all perspectives. Nowhere else in the world do you find first-rate research alongside meetings, education, and publishing. This multifaceted approach keeps CSHL in the hearts and minds of scientists around the world.
—David Stewart,
Executive Director of the Meetings & Courses Program
The constant multinational, multiethnic influx and exchange of people infuses the Lab with a vibrant and infectious energy.
When someone arrives for a course, they often work harder than they do “back home,” committed to learning sophisticated new technology in a compressed period of a few days or weeks.
Ten CSHL Course students have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. For example, in 1995, Rod MacKinnon, then a Harvard professor, came for the X-ray crystallography course. Three years later, he solved his Nobel Prize-winning structure using the techniques he learned.
Like everything else at CSHL, scientific meetings have a distinctly informal atmosphere.
Young biologists come not just to learn, but also to meet and socialize with others in their field. Their elders attend because of the strong sense of community built around the Meetings.
It is a sense of responsibility, a desire to support the next generation of science—simply by listening to talks and engaging at poster sessions.
—John Inglis,
Executive Director of the CSHL Press
