Nicoletta Sacchi on CSHL Unique Aspects
  Nicoletta Sacchi     Biography    
Recorded: 08 Jun 2004

I came here for the first time in ’87. And that was a time when the Genome Project was starting to take shape. So I am glad to see that seventeen years later now the epigenome is getting in shape. So in other words Cold Spring Harbor I like this place because in part that the uniqueness of this nature and is very peaceful so you really can unwind when you come here. But also bigger concepts are debated at one point with scientists from all over the world. And I expect that if it was for the genome, also these epigenes or epigenome or whatever we will be calling it in the next years, definitely we will be learning more and more. So in other words, they spot the right topics that needed to be tackled by all of us even if we come from different fields.

And this is what I like of Cold Spring Harbor. The second thing I like of Cold Spring Harbor, is that as a younger scientist coming here gives you some kind of confidence that you are a regular human being, be you a woman or a man it doesn't matter, you will be able to make it if you persevere. Because you see that scientists are human beings. They eat at a cafeteria. They look at the same harbor like we do. So in a way it is inspiring in that sense for young people to come here and think I can also make it because I am a regular human being, but I am also having ideas and I am like them. So I might be able with some luck, because science is also luck not only perseverance, maybe I can have my ideas coming out in… with very good discoveries.

They don’t need to be flashy discoveries. Sometimes everybody contributes a little bit to the big part of science. So I think that is what Cold Spring Harbor gives you, a sense of legacy. The old scientist and that you can do something for the future. I think this is what I feel about Cold Spring Harbor. Cold Spring Harbor again has these fascinations of old and new. So that you are related to the old and the new, and the past and the future. This is the fascination of the place in my

Nicoletta Sacchi, Ph.D., is a Professor and Distinguished Member of the Department of Cancer Biology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York where she has been focusing on gene regulation in cancer cells since 2003. Native to Milan, Italy, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Milan in 1972, followed by postdoctoral work at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, at the Roche Institute of Immunology in Basel under Nobelist Georges Köhler.

In 1982 she came to the United States to continue her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute. She returned to Italy in 1991 to become an Associate Professor at the University of Milan, until 1997 when she decided to make the US her home. That year she became a Visiting Scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

In 2002 Dr. Sacchi, was named the most cited women scientist and the 18th most cited scientist worldwide That year she received recognition for having the most quoted paper over the 20 year period from 1983 to 2002, "Single-step method of RNA isolation by acid guanidinium thiocyanate phenol chloroform extraction" Analytical Biochemistry 162(1):156-9,1987, which she co-wrote with Piotr Chomczynski.. This article has been cited over 56,000 times as of January, 2008.

Dr. Sacchi has been awarded the EMBO Award (1974 and 1981), the Soroptimist International Award (1976), AIRC Award (1984), the Gianina Gaslini Medal (1989), and the BIOTEC Award (1989.)