Nikola Pavletich


Nikola Panayot Pavletich is the chair of structural biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Education

Pavletich received his BS in chemistry from Caltech in 1988 and his PhD in molecular biology and genetics from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1991. He did a postdoc at MIT with Carl Pabo.

Career

He joined the faculty at Sloan Kettering in 1993 and was named chair of the Structural Biology Program in 2003. He has been an HHMI investigator since 1997.
His laboratory researches malignant cell growth and DNA damage contributing to the development of cancer. DNA damage repair is a significant factor in whether a cell will become cancerous after genetic insult. Some of his major focuses have been the mTOR pathway and BRCA1. His lab uses x-ray crystallography to determine how proteins interact.

Awards