Featured Alumni

Martin Friedlander, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Friedlander received his undergraduate education at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine where he graduated with Highest Honors in Biology, class of '71 After receiving his M.D., he completed a residency and retina fellowship at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been on the faculties of the Rockefeller University (where he worked with Professor Gunter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine) and the University of California, Los Angeles prior to joining the staff of the Scripps Research Institute and Scripps Memorial Hospital in 1993.

He is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and the Graduate Program in Macromolecular and Cellular Structure and Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. He is a Staff Ophthalmologist and Chief of the Retina Service at Scripps Clinic and Green Hospital as well as a Staff Ophthalmologist at Scripps Memorial Hospital.

His research interests focus on understanding the role of integrins, matrix metalloproteinases and their antagonists during angiogenesis. He has also had a long-standing interest in targeting, translocation and integration of polytopic membrane proteins including rhodopsin and sodium-calcium exchangers. The two research programs are integrated by their application to the treatment of neovascular eye disease and inherited retinal degenerations.

Dr. Freidlander annually recruits undergraduates from Bowdoin College for summer internships at the Scripps Research Institute.

Jef D. Boeke, Ph.D., D.Sc.

Jef D. Boeke, of the Bowdoin Class of 1976, is a premier scientist whose research into anti-viral and anti-cancer technology has helped in the battle against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Boeke is a professor and geneticist in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has discovered and patented an anti-viral technology that creates a hybrid gene capable of destroying the HIV virus when transferred into infected cells. He has published more than 130 articles in professional journals and scientific texts. He has been granted two patents and has four others pending for various methods of protein synthesis and transposition.

Boeke has been an active participant in professional organizations and affiliated groups for 15 years. He has served on the grant review panel of the American Cancer Society since 1977 and has been a member since 1992 of the scientific advisory board of Avigen Inc., based in Alameda, California. He is an editorial board member for Molecular and Cellular Biology and a past member of the Medical School Council. He also serves as an ad hoc member of the National Institutes of Health study sections and as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the Genetics Society of America, the American Society for microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

At Bowdoin, Boeke graduated summa cum laude with highest departmental honors in biochemistry. He was a James Bowdoin Scholar and won the Donald and Harriet S. Macomber Prize in Biology, given annually to the most outstanding biology student, and the George Wood McArthur Prize, given to the scholarship student with the highest academic standing in the graduating class. He is a member of the Bowdoin chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Hs wife, Suzanne Utzchneider Boeke, is a member of the Bowdoin Class of 1977. Upon graduation, Boeke was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study alpine Andean plants in several South American countries. He earned his doctorate in molecular biology from Rockefeller University in 1982 and was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow from 1982 to 1985 at The Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1986, he joined Johns Hopkins as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1990 and full professor in 1995. From 1990 to 1995, he was a recipient of an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award.

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Kenneth E. Legins Jr.

Kenneth E. Legins Jr., Bowdoin Class of 1992, was given the 2006 Common Good Award. This award, bestowed by the Bowdoin Board of Trustees, honors alumni who have "demonstrated extraordinary, profound, and sustained commitment to the common good, in the interest and for the benefit of society, with disregard for personal gains."

He has dedicated his life and career to health education, children's advocacy, and women's rights. He has been a constant leader in HIV/AIDS education, a pursuit that has brought him to all corners of the world, from Maine to New York, to Denmark and Japan, and most recently, to China. Read More