Thijn Brummelkamp

Thijn Brummelkamp is currently a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical research(http://wi.mit.edu). He joined the Whitehead Institute in 2004.

He received his MS in Biology at the Free University in Amsterdam, Following which, he went on to the Netherlands Cancer Institute for his graduate research and received his PhD cum laude from Utrecht University in the year 2003.

Some of his achievements include the following:

• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Award in the year 2003

• NVBMB (Dutch association for biochemistry and molecular biology) Award in 2004

• He was also chosen as one of the world's 35 Top Young Innovators by MIT's Technology Review magazine TR100 in the year 2005.

• Kimmel Scholar Award1 in 2006.

• Thijn Brummelkamp exploited the process called RNA intereference(RNAi) to selectively study the function of genes. He and his colleagues for the first time ever, described the concept of 'stable interference' which is nowadays widely used to manipulate gene function in mammalian cells.

• He has also performed several RNAi screens to better understand gene function. Through these RNAi screens, he also discovered and assigned function to the familial cylindromatosis gene which shed some light on the cause of a very poorly characterized form of hereditary skin cancer.