Official Story
Daniel Colón-Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He completed his B.A. at Harvard University. During his undergraduate career, he pursued research projects, such as studying the use of medicinal plants among indigenous Central American communities with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). He then worked as a research assistant, with the support of an NIH Diversity Supplement, in Dr. Mariano García-Blanco's laboratory at Duke University. There, he studied how the architecture of the nucleus of the algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii changes to affect cytoplasmic events, such as transcript localization. He stayed at Duke to pursue his PhD in the laboratory of cell biologist Sally Kornbluth. For his doctoral work, Colón-Ramos studied the molecular mechanisms underlying programmed cell death, or apoptosis, and identified a viral family of proteins that induce apoptosis, which are similar to the so-called "Reaper" proteins first identified in fruit flies. He also found that these proteins operate by regulating protein translation, directly binding to the ribosomes-which are the cellular machinery that translate RNA messages into protein products-to alter their assembly. He completed his dissertation "The reaper tales: molecular mechanism of inhibition of translation and induction of apoptosis by a novel family of reaper-like proteins" in 2003. Following his PhD, Colón-Ramos moved to California to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscientist Kang Shen's laboratory as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation fellow, with the additional support of a National Institutes of Health "Pathways to Independence" award. There, he shifted his research focus to studying the developmental neurobiology of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. To understand how synapses are established, he established a system to track synapses over the worms development using in vivo cellular markers. Using this system, he found that glial cells provide a roadmap for these connections to be made through the signaling molecule netrin. In 2008, he joined the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine as an assistant professor. In 2013, he was promoted to associate professor, and in 2019 to the McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology. The Colón-Ramos lab is interested in how synapses are precisely assembled to build the neuronal architecture that underlies behavior. To address this, they developed tools in the thermotaxis circuit of C. elegans. Their system enables unbiased genetic screens to identify novel pathways that instruct synaptogenesis in vivo, and single-cell manipulation of these pathways to understand how they influence behavior. As mechanisms underlying synapse structure and function are conserved, the research program seeks to enhance our understanding of synaptic cell biology in higher organisms, which may be important for disease. His work has been recognized by the 2018 NIH Pioneer Award, the 2018 Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, HHMI Faculty Scholar Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Early Career Award, and the Sloan Research Fellowship.
Unofficial Story
Daniel Colón-Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He was a nerdy kid that annoyed teachers with many questions, and by the time he graduate from elementary school, he was nicknamed "the student with a thousand unanswered questions". His parents, which were the first in their respective families to go to college, emphasized education. Daniel was admitted to Harvard University and wondered, almost every day for four years of undergrad, who made the mistake of admitting him. He was fired from his first lab job. He did not fit in and explored his identity as a scientist and his interests in social justice by studying the use of medicinal plants among indigenous Central American communities, in part to get away from the labs at Harvard. He worked alone and almost failed his honors thesis. He had a pretty mediocre college career. He followed his girlfriend (now wife) to Duke University and worked as a postbac, with Puerto Rican scientists Dr. Mariano García-Blanco. He was put in a marginal project, which turned into a wonderful research opportunity and his first paper. He then stayed at Duke to pursue his PhD in the laboratory of cell biologist Sally Kornbluth, were he studied the molecular mechanisms underlying programmed cell death. He studied for his qualifying exam in federal prison after protesting the military bombings in Vieques, Puerto Rico. He was frequently remined in graduate school that he was accepted because he was a minority. He dedicated his thesis dissertation "To those who could have done a better job than I, but never received the opportunities...may they (one day) receive the opportunities to share their knowledge and their skills in a society w/o prejudices". He moved to California, in a hurry, following his wife who matched at UCSF, and interviewed with Kang Shen in a car, because Kang did not have a lab at the time (he was a postdoc with Cori Bargmann and had not yet started his position at Stanford). He applied to several postdoc fellowships, was rejected from most, but was awarded the Damon Runyon and later, was in the inaugural class of the K-99/R-00 grantees. He spent the first six months of his postdoc in failed cloning attempts, followed by the death of a close friend, it was not until late in the first year he managed to gather interpretable data for his project, and at that, in a side project which was not part of his main research program goals. In 2008, he joined the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine as an assistant professor. In the first four years he applied to over fifty grants before he was awarded his first three grants. His first R-01 he got by the skin of his teeth. His first paper was rejected five times and took a year and a half of revisions. During that time he had triplets, five years later, another baby, all girls. His wife is an academic scientist. He was recently named the McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Yale University, and submitted this biography late because he has been revising a manuscript that has been in the review process for 17 months.