Anthony Koleske, PhD

Anthony J. Koleske is an expert in understanding the biochemical mechanisms that regulate neuronal dendrite and synapse development. After receiving a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Koleske performed his Ph.D. studies with Dr. Richard Young at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For his Ph.D. thesis, Dr. Koleske discovered the RNA polymerase II holoenzyme, an important advancement in understanding how gene transcription is turned on. Dr. Koleske went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. David Baltimore at M.I.T., where he began his work studying cellular functions of Abl family kinases, which his laboratory has shown are essential regulators of the cytoskeleton in diverse cell types. Dr. Koleske joined the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in 1998, where he currently is Professor and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Koleske is the recipient of numerous awards including a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship, Special Fellowship and Scholar Awards from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Young Investigator and Established Investigator Awards from NARSAD, an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. He has served widely on review panels, including terms as Chair of the Basic Science Study Section for the American Heart Association and the Neurodifferentiation, Plasticity, Repair, and Rhythmicity Study Section of the NIH. He served as Director of the combined PhD programs in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Yale (2014-2019). He also served Director of the China Scholarship Council-Yale World Scholars Program (2014-2019) and was a co-Director of the Yale BioMed SURF Amgen Scholars Program (w/Faye Rogers and Barbara Kazmierczak)(2015-2020).