Michael Koelle Named Next Head of Ezra Stiles College!

 

Koelle will succeed Alicia Schmidt Camacho, a professor of ethnicity, race and migration and American studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), who has been head of Ezra Stiles since 2020.

 

College Heads serve as the chief administrative officer and presiding faculty member within the residential colleges, and help nurture the social, cultural, and educational life there, a role that has become a cherished Yale tradition.

 

Since arriving at Yale in 1996, Koelle has run a research lab in the Yale Medical Center studying how neurons in the brain communicate with each other to think thoughts and control behaviors. His research also aims to understand what goes wrong with molecules and neurons in conditions like drug addiction and depression.

 

“Experiments in the Koelle lab range from studying the biochemical functions of purified brain proteins, to analyzing the structures of neurons using electron microscopes, to tracking activity of neurons genetically engineered to emit light every time they fire,” Lewis wrote. “A current focus in the lab is understanding the mechanism by which opioids and other molecules act to turn down activity of neurons.”

 

For more than 25 years, he has taught in “MB&B 300 Principles of Biochemistry,” a course for which he won Yale College’s Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences. He also teaches the “Biology 101 Biochemistry and Biophysics” course taken by first-year students.

 

He also served as the director of undergraduate studies for the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry major for 13 years and is a past chair of the Yale College Teaching, Learning, and Advising Committee.

 

He will begin a five-year term on July 1.

 

“I look forward to joining the staff and students of Stiles,” Koelle said. “I’m excited to lead this vibrant community, helping students to learn from each other, support each other, and enjoy these special years in their lives.”

 

Joining Koelle as associate head will be his wife, Lore Gruenbaum, the chief scientific officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), a public charitable organization dedicated to curing blood cancers and improving the lives of patients through education, financial support, and advocacy. After earning a biochemistry Ph.D. at Free University of Berlin, Germany, she came to Yale as a postdoctoral scientist and then pursued a 20-year career in drug development at pharmaceutical and biotech companies before moving to nonprofit work. Gruenbaum now leads the research mission at LLS, overseeing all biomedical grant programs, a master clinical trial for acute myeloid leukemia, and a venture philanthropy program that invests in and partners with biotech companies developing new cancer therapies.

 

As Lewis noted in his message, Koelle and Gruenbaum are also avid amateur classical musicians; Koelle is a violinist, and Gruenbaum plays cello and piano. “They met not through science but rather playing chamber music at a workshop sponsored by the Yale School of Music,” he wrote. Their two children, Benjamin and Miriam, are both attending Yale College as undergraduates. The family will be joined at Stiles by their one-year-old rescue cat, Sonny.

 

In announcing Koelle’s appointment, Lewis also thanked Alicia Schmidt Camacho for her “extraordinary leadership and service to Ezra Stiles College” as its head over the past five years.