The Biology Department is proud to host the yearly Chipperfield Lecture which honors Randy Chipperfield who, before his tragic and untimely death in 1985, was pursuing his doctoral degree in the Biology Graduate Program.

Randy Chipperfield was interested in how a normal cell becomes a cancerous one. While he was in the Weinberg lab at the Whitehead Institute, Randy worked on the structure of the Ras protein which is involved, in its altered, oncogenic form, in the formation of approximately 25% of human cancers.

The Ras protein has several distinct functional domains, which are involved in regulating its activation as a signaling molecule, its ability to emit signals to downstream effectors, and its ability to shut itself off and thereby cease signal emission. Randy used site-directed mutagenesis to determine the locations of some of these critical functional domains of the Ras protein. He intended to pursue postdoctoral research in the area of neurobiology.

Randy's work was cut short by his death after a fall through winter ice on the Charles River in February, 1985, only months before the scheduled completion of his doctoral work. His doctoral degree was awarded posthumously.

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