Official Story
Niels did his undergraduate studies in Biology at Harvard College and his graduate studies at Yale, where he earned a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Physiology for studies of membrane trafficking in the synapse. His continued interest in neurobiology led him to MIT, where he studied the nematode C. elegans with the goal of developing approaches to understand molecular mechanisms of neuromodulation using behavioral genetics. Niels joined the Skirball Institute at the NYU School of Medicine in 2009 to continue this research. He is now a Professor in the Departments of Cell Biology and Neuroscience and Physiology and a member of the Neuroscience Institute.
Unofficial Story
Niels was not supposed to be a scientist. He was a decent student with some basic competencies in math, physics and chemistry, but before college Niels was charting a course towards some imagined career that involved reading, listening to music, and talking to friends. The summer before college, Niels needed a job. He found one at a nearby university in a laboratory that studied the proteins that control how your body retains salt and water. This laboratory had reinvented a classic biochemical technique to watch the activation and inactivation of salt transporters in intact tissues in real time. Niels’s job was to clean up after experiments were done, but he got to watch and experience the excitement of seeing how an experiment can reveal the invisible workings of molecular machines. The hook was set and that fall Niels declared a major in Biology. College was spent catching up on the fundamentals. There were also many opportunities to spend time in the lab. Summers were spent studying membrane biophysics, the academic year was spent studying bacterial genetics and molecular biology. Loving the lab didn’t prevent some kind of burn-out. Instead of immediately applying to graduate school, Niels took a job after college teaching math and chemistry to middle- and high-school students on Cape Cod. This was a good year. Teaching normalized not-knowing - something that did not happen at university - and made the prospect of getting back into research irresistible. In graduate school and during his post-doc Niels was again lucky in finding mentors who tolerated his quirks and supported his efforts to learn something new about biology, this time with a focus on neuroscience. As a PI, he hopes to pass on the thrill of doing experiments, which never goes away, and to give out as much support and encouragement as he received.