Daniel Alfonso Colón-Ramos, A Student with 1,000 Questions, Wins E.E. Just Award | ASCB

Daniel Colón-Ramos teaches in the MBL's Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics and Survival (SPINES).

Daniel Alfonso Colón-Ramos always liked asking questions. Growing up in Puerto Rico, his questions earned him a lousy reputation among teachers. But now as a professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Yale, Colón-Ramos’ endless inquiries have led him to win the American Society for Cell Biology's 2016 E.E. Just Award for outstanding scientific achievement by a minority scientist. Colón-Ramos will give the E.E. Just Lecture at the 2016 ASCB Annual Meeting [in December], receiving a plaque and a medal for his accomplishments.

In Puerto Rico, Colón-Ramos remembered, “My teachers gave me the nickname ‘the student of 1,000 questions.’ It wasn’t kindly given.” But his thousands of questions led him to discover a career where asking questions was rewarded, “I learned early on that scientists asked questions, and I thought, ‘Here’s a profession where I can ask questions about what was going on around me.’” Pursuing biology, he earned his bachelor’s at Harvard, and then joined Sally Kornbluth’s lab at Duke University for his PhD in genetics and molecular biology.