Dr. Carl Nathan

Dr. Carl Nathan is co-chair of the Immunology Program at the Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences. He also serves as chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Learning at the Source

To me, the quality of our Graduate School stems from the happy alliance of diverse points of view in the different subjects taught. This is a product of the structure of the Graduate School as a consortium. Formally the school is a collaboration between Cornell University and Sloan Kettering Institute, but in actuality there is more to it than that. In the case of immunology, the Cornell group includes another institution, The Hospital for Special Surgery, which is one of the country's very top institutions for rheumatic and musculo-skeletal diseases. In this way, these faculty members bring a deep interest in autoimmunity and inflammation. In addition, the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, the Chemical Biology Program, and the Computational Biology Program bring us into frequent contact with faculty and students at Rockefeller University.

At the Graduate School there's a tremendous sense of vitality because of the opportunities to do translational research or, equally important, to think in terms of how one would define basic questions so that they have potential plug-in or modular adaptability to translational research. That comes from being in institutions that are physically attached to places where patients with diverse immunologically-related illnesses are being treated.

Being the Right Size

Another way to look at what makes this graduate school strong is the issue of what constitutes an optimal size for an educational environment. There's no one answer. I think different people benefit from different sizes and structures. But here you have a series of nested structures, which means you can find your own answer in the same location. You have the divisions, which are small. You have the integrated program, which is quite large. And you have the affiliated programs, which make the structure bigger. So, for example, together with Rockefeller University, one of our tri-institutional partners, we teach advanced topics in immunology. As a result, students from there come here part of the time, while our students go there part of the time. When students meet with their peers from another institution, they become a cohort in their network. These are people you can relate to for technical advice, for expertise, and for friendships or professional relationships that can last a lifetime.