Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for a program featuring Nobel Prize recipient Mary Brunkow.
The program will be presented in-person and on Zoom on Thursday morning. The formal meeting including the program runs from 7:30-8:30 a.m. No registration is required, and the program is free.
- The in-person meeting will be at the North Seattle Church (2150 N 122nd St, Seattle). Doors open at 7:00 a.m. and the program begins at 7:30 a.m.
- Click here to join the meeting on Zoom. The line will open shortly after 7:00 a.m.
Mary Elizabeth Brunkow is a Distinguished Investigator at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle.
She is a recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Brunkow was recognized, along with Drs. Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi, for groundbreaking discoveries illuminating the mechanisms of peripheral immune tolerance, including the identification of the FOXP3 gene and regulatory T cells’ central role in preventing autoimmune disease.
Born and raised in Portland, OR, Brunkow attended St. Mary’s Academy before earning a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Washington. She went on to complete MS and PhD degrees in Molecular Biology at Princeton. She conducted post-doctoral research at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (now the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute) in Toronto.
In 1994, Brunkow joined Darwin Molecular Corporation, a pioneering gene-discovery biotechnology start-up in Bothell, WA, co-founded by ISB’s founding president, Dr. Leroy Hood. At Darwin, she worked alongside mentors and collaborators, including Drs. David Galas, Fred Ramsdell, Steve Ziegler, and John Mulligan.
Between 2003 and 2005, she combined consulting and contract research roles with completing a certificate in technical and scientific writing, while also focusing on her family life. In 2006, she joined ISB as a Science Writer in Dr. Alan Aderem’s laboratory, helping communicate complex systems biology findings to broader audiences. She later served as Associate Director of Program Management at Trubion Pharmaceuticals (2008-2009) before returning to ISB in 2009 as Program Manager, Genetics, a position she still holds today.
At ISB, Brunkow has been instrumental in coordinating and managing complex, multi-disciplinary projects that integrate human genetics, whole-genome sequencing, and computational biology to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying diseases such as Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and bipolar disorder. Her work exemplifies ISB’s collaborative approach – connecting data, disciplines, and people to accelerate biomedical discovery and ensure that science serves the greater public good.