Alexander Tarakhovsky,

advisor, geneticist

venue: Fridericianum

Alexander (Sasha) Tarakhovsky was born in 1955 in the city of Chernivtsi, formerly part of the USSR. His father, a university professor, and his mother, a teacher, had left their native Kiev for Chernivtsi in order to escape the rabid anti-semitic campaign that engulfed the political centers of the country in the early 1950s. In the mid-60s the family returned to Kiev, where Tarakhovsky finished his schooling. He went on to graduate from medical school and started a professional career as a scientist at the Institute for Cancer Research, an affiliate of the Ukrainian Academy of Science.

In 1990, Tarakhovsky received the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and left for Germany, where he became a junior group leader and later a professor at the Institute for Genetics, at the University of Cologne. He left Cologne in 2000 to assume a faculty position at The Rockefeller University in New York, where he currently works as a professor and laboratory head. Tarakhovsky’s main interest is in epigenetics, a branch of biological science that studies the mechanism of induction and propagation of newly acquired features. His work, as well as epigenetics in general, provides a better understanding of our identity by showing that nurture in its various forms imprints itself on our genetic nature and affects the fate of individual cells and organisms.

Alexander Tarakhovsky,

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