2000

Toshi Takagi obtained his MD from Kyushu University and his Phd at University of Tokyo.  He did postdoctoral work in the Buratowski lab from 1996 to 2000 with support from the American Cancer Society.  In the process of identifying the first higher eukaryotic capping enzyme gene, he discovered a new class of RNA phosphatases that resembled protein tyrosine phosphatases.  Since leaving the lab, he has been a senior research scientist at Shionogi BioResearch, Merck, and Rosetta.

Philip is originally from Ukraine, got his undergraduate and masters degrees in medicine from Moscow State University, and his PhD at University of New Hampshire. As a postdoc, he did groundbreaking work on TFIID TAFs, and together with Eun-Jung Cho, showed that changing RNA pol II CTD phosphorylation patterns during elongation recruited different RNA processing factors. After leaving the lab, Philip went to the MIT Sloan School for his MBA, and since then has been working in Boston's biotech sector.