Bert Lester (Blumenthal) Vallee was born in Germany on June 1. He grew up in Luxembourg.
Oral History
Timeline
Key Moments in Vallee History All EntriesNatalie (Kuggie) Kugris was born in Girardville, PA
With a BSC from the University of Bern, Bert Vallee moved to the US as the first and only fellow of the International Student Service of the League of Nations.
Bert earned his MD from NYU College of Medicine and began work at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became interested in the...
Kuggie moved to Boston to attend Boston University. She earned her BS and EdM in Biology from Boston University while working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the...
Bert was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship to study emission arc spectroscopy in the world-famous spectroscopy laboratory affiliated with the physics,...
Kuggie earned her EdD from Boston University and subsequently became Professor of Biology at Lesley College where she remained for 27 years.
Bert established the Biophysics Research Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. This laboratory became the locus of Bert’s...
Bert named Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Bert discovered the unique protein metallothionein, a low-molecular weight cysteine-rich protein. The protein binds zinc atoms very tightly and has been implicated in the...
Bert became the Paul C Cabot Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School.
Harvard and Monsanto embarked on a radical departure from conventional academic research by entering into a joint venture catalyzed by Bert and Monsanto Vice-President, Monte...
Bert established the Endowment for Research in Human Biology at Harvard with income from the Bronfman Foundation to fund research in alcohol metabolism.
Kuggie became Professor of Biology, Emeritus, at Lesley College and subsequently was appointed Lecturer on Biology in the Center for Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences and...
Hans Jornvall (Karolinska Institutet) brought his whole lab to visit Bert’s lab.
Bert and Kuggie established The Bert L & N Kuggie Vallee Foundation Inc to promote a collegial community of international scientists, to enhance scientific collaboration and...
In the spring, Clarence ‘Bud’ Ryan, a leader in the field of innate immune response in plants at Washington State University, had, in his words, “the tremendous honor and...
Edmond H Fischer (University of Washington) had a “most rewarding experience” in Bert’s lab where the three main themes under investigation (metallothionein and Zn2+ metabolism;...
The Vallee Foundation’s first Symposium, held in Boston in May, brought together 18 scientists, both VVPs and others, to celebrate “Forty Years of...
From now on, not all VVPs came to Bert’s Lab. The Vallee Foundation began to send VVPs further afield: Earl Davie, a biochemist studying blood proteins involved in coagulation...
Wade Harper (Harvard Medical School) spent a month in the lab of Dame Louise Johnson at Oxford. “How very rare it is for scientists to be able to spend several weeks fully away...
Dame Louise Johnson, a leading molecular biologist and protein crystallographer at the University of Oxford, and Cheng-Wen Wu, who was doing pioneering work on the four-step...
Kuggie retired from Harvard University.
Fourteen Vallee Visiting Professors and members of Bert Vallee’s lab met in Annecy in the spring of 2002 at the second Vallee Meeting to report on their research.
Long-standing collaborations were furthered and expanded when Gerard Canters (Leiden University) spent his VVP sabbatical in Allen Hill’s lab at Oxford. “The excellent scientific...
Malcolm Green (University of Oxford) was provided with a much-needed opportunity to think about his future research program during his month-long VVP sabbatical in Jeremy...
In addition to providing an opportunity for formal and informal science reports from several VVPs, the 2004 meeting, held in Boston, was devoted to two themes: “Molecular...
Hans Jörnvall (Karolinska Institutet), who had known and collaborated with Bert since the 1970s, came back to Bert’s lab for his VVP sabbatical. Douglas Rees (California...
Lewis Cantley, who was then at Harvard Medical School, took the closest he had come to a sabbatical experience in Louise Johnson’s lab at the University of Oxford. “Being...
The 2006 Vallee Summer Symposium convened 15 VVPs to Endicott House in Dedham to talk about their work. Topics included peptide signals for the innate immune response in plants...
Bert and Kuggie Vallee loved Montana. Both were keen horse riders and relished the outdoors. The wide-open spaces surrounding the 320 Guest Ranch in Big Sky provided a...
Jesper Haeggström (Karolinska Institutet) spent his VVP sabbatical in the lab of Charles Serhan lab at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. “One facet of my visit that was...
Peter Howley (Harvard Medical School) spent two weeks in Oxford thanks to Dame Louise Johnson and Allen Hill and two weeks hosted by Moshe Yaniv at the Institut Pasteur. “It...
The 2009 Summer Symposium, again held in Dedham, provided an opportunity for 16 VVPs and other scholars and scientists to talk about their work as well as explore The Future for...
In May, 2010, Torsten Wiesel came back to Harvard to renew contact with the Department of Neurobiology, where he had previously been a member for twenty years. “My experience as...
Bert Lester Vallee died on May 7. S James Adelstein (Paul C Cabot Distinguished Professor of Medical Biophysics, Harvard Medical School) became President of the Vallee...
Bert Vallee had planned that the 2010 Summer Meeting would take place in Iceland, but the location was quickly moved to Boston when it became clear that his health was...
Natalie Kugris (Kuggie) Vallee died on November 23.
Stephen Benkovic (Penn State) collaborated with colleagues in the Bensimon Lab at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, to understand the workings of molecular machines and in...
The 2012 Summer Symposium was held in Iceland on the theme of Molecular Machines.
Naama Barkai (Weizmann Institute of Science) had three hosts in Boston during the summer: Andrew Murray at Harvard’s Center for Systems Biology in Cambridge, Aviv Regev at the...
The first Vallee Lindau Fellows were appointed to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Miri Krupkin (Weizmann Institute of Sciences) Fernanda Duarte (Uppsala University)...
The first Young Investigator Awardees were appointed. Kirsty Spalding (Karolinska Institutet): Adipose tissue mass regulation in lean and obese individuals. David Tobin (Duke...
Four more Vallee Young Investigator Awards were given to: Sandeep Robert Datta, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, is working on the development and function of neural circuits....
Ron Vale (University of California, San Francisco) spent a month at the Curie Institute in Paris, hosted by Genevieve Almouzni. “I chose the Curie Institut in Paris because...
The first Bert and Natalie Vallee Award in Biomedical Science was awarded to Michael Gottesman (National Cancer Institute) at the annual meeting of the ASBMB
The second group of Vallee Lindau Fellows attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Renata Gomes (Kings College London) Alice Matimba (University of Zimbabwe) Maria Molina...
The 2014 Summer Symposium was held in Boston on the topic of Protein Homeostasis, Metabolism, and Cancer.
Bonnie Bassler (Princeton University) spent her VVP sabbatical in Arturo Zychlinsky’s lab at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin): “I’m home from my Vallee...
The third round of Vallee Young Investigators was appointed: Martin Jinek (University of Zurich): Enhancing the capabilities of CRISPR-Cas9 RNA-guided genome editing....
David Eisenberg, Paul Boyer Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UCLA and an HHMI Investigator, is the second winner of the American Society for Biochemistry and...
Peter M Howley, PhD, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School, was elected President of the Vallee...
Six Vallee Lindau Fellows attended the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting this year: Joanne Fothergill (University of Liverpool) Katie Harron PhD (University College London)...
The 2015 Summer Meeting focused on the work being done by a handful of Vallee Young Investigators: David Tobin (Duke University Medical Center); Feng Zhang (McGovern Institute,...
Five internationally recognized leaders in biomedical research were named the 2016 Vallee Visiting Professors. Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, (Director, Department of Regulation in...
The 2016 Summer Symposium is a multi-disciplinary meeting taking place in Rapallo, Italy. Showcasing work by selected Vallee Visiting Professors and Young Investigators, the...
Nine senior scientists took their Vallee Visiting Professor sabbaticals this year: Karen Vousden (Chief Scientist, Cancer Research, UK) spent a month at Weil Cornell Medicine’s...
Bonnie Bassler (Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton University) gave a lively talk on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication as...
Five Vallee Visiting Professors were appointed: Kay Davies, DPhil, FMedSci, FRCP (hon), FRCPath, CBE, DBE, FRS (Dr Lee’s Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford);...
Five early career scientists were appointed Vallee Scholars: Viviana Gradinaru, PhD, Assistant Professor, The California Institute of Technology; Shalev Itzkovitz, PhD, Senior...
Carla Shatz (Sapp Family Provostial Professor of Biology and Neurobiology and the David Starr Jordan Director of Stanford Bio-X) spent her VVP sabbatical at Columbia University’s...
The 2017 Vallee Summer Meeting was devoted to the Vallee Scholars, the younger generation of basic biomedical researchers supported by the Bert L & N Kuggie Vallee...
Geraldine Seydoux (Huntington Sheldon Professor in Medical Discovery and Vice Dean for Basic Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and HHMI Investigator)...
Elena Conti, PhD (Director of the Department of Structural Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich) and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, PhD (Group Leader,...
The 2018 Vallee Foundation Summer Symposium was held in Dublin June 15-18, 2018. The Symposium, entitled “Imaging in Cell Biology and Neuroscience,” brought together an...
Five more Vallee Scholars are appointed: Tanmay Bharat, PhD (Group leader, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford); Mark T Harnett, PhD (Assistant Professor,...
F Ulrich Hartl, (Director, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried) took his Vallee Visiting Professorship sabbatical at Stanford University in September/October, where...
Four new VVPs were appointed: Wolfgang Baumeister, PhD (Director & Scientific Member, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried and Honorary Professor, Technical...