Nurturing the next generation of scientists

Nobel laureate Victor Ambros, PhD, inspires mentees worldwide through enthusiasm, curiosity and trust 

By Hallie Leo

When Victor R. Ambros, PhD, received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for co-discovering microRNA, mentees around the globe from China to Chicago celebrated, recounting their fondest memories with the ultra-charismatic scientist.

UMass Chan Distinguished Professor and Nobel laureate Craig C. Mello, PhD, who completed his doctoral research in Ambros’ lab at Harvard University, remembers playing volleyball on Friday evenings in Cambridge in 1984 and sipping beer from a hollowed-out ball with Dr. Ambros, the Silverman Chair in Natural Sciences and professor of molecular medicine. A nod to their friendship exists on UMass Chan’s campus via a sand volleyball court that Dr. Mello helped install.

“Victor inspires me through his enthusiasm for science and the curiosity he displays,” said Mello, the 2006 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for co-discovering RNAi. “He’s got a phenotype similar to mine where we’re on the same page, easily excited and feeding each other’s enthusiasm.”

“Victor plays at the science. For him, it’s fun, and he makes it fun for others. That’s why he’s good at what he does,” Mello said. “He’s a Nobel magnet. He says it’s because he was in the right room. I told him, ‘Victor, you made it the right room.’”

Zhongchi Liu, PhD, met Dr. Ambros and Mello in 1984 as a PhD student entering the Cell and Developmental Biology Department at Harvard University. Dr. Liu, who fondly remembers having tea time many afternoons while a student, coincidentally discovered Ambros had won the Nobel Prize while she was jogging near a tea house.

“When I came to the U.S. in the early 80s, I never tasted Coke, had a credit card or a phone. There was a lot I didn't know,” said Liu. “My confidence was low and Victor encouraged me by simply being kind and using an equal-footing attitude to talk to me. It made a difference in my self-confidence and my growth as a scientist.”

In the Ambros lab, Liu studied genes in C. elegans, focusing on a special form of worm—the dauer larva— that seals its mouth to avoid eating. Her research found how the heterochronic genes regulated the timing of development. She is currently a distinguished professor at the Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology, in Shenzhen, China, after working as a professor at the University of Maryland for 28 years.

In 2009, Ambros and his wife, Rosalind “Candy” Lee, the senior scientist and first author on the 1993 Cell paper cited by the Nobel Committee, visited China with Liu to see the total solar eclipse. When they arrived, a Shanghai Medical College student picked them up and started talking about his own project on microRNA, unaware he was transporting the scientists who discovered it.

“Victor was smiling because he didn’t tell the student that he discovered microRNA, and somehow the student didn’t know,” said Liu. “It was funny that Victor didn’t point it out. He’s very low key.”

During that trip, Liu confided that she was switching her field of research from arabidopsis to wild strawberry, aiming to redomesticate strawberries for vertical farming, hoping for an environmentally sustainable way to grow horticulture crops and increase the strawberry’s nutritional value.

“Although I switched from worms to arabidopsis and then to wild strawberry, I applied the same genetic approaches, which I owe a lot to Victor’s training,” Liu said. “I treat strawberries like C. elegans, doing gene knockouts and looking at the phenotype. I learned to think like Victor in asking important biological questions.”

Howard Scott Silverman, DPhil, founder and CEO of the entrepreneurial investment firm Agman, which launches companies and builds them into enterprises, was a freshman at Dartmouth College in an introductory biology class when he met Ambros. His research focused on transcriptional regulation of lin-4, the original microRNA discovered by the Ambros lab.

“The thrill of science and of discovery was invigorating for me,” said Dr. Silverman. “Victor elevates my thinking every time I’m around him.”

Ambros proudly bears the name of his mentee as the Silverman Chair in Natural Sciences, a chair endowed by Silverman and his family in 2008.

“I saw an opportunity as an investor to make a bet on something that felt like a sure thing,” Silverman said. “Our family was thrilled and privileged to endow a professorship at UMass Chan, which was based on the legacy of our relationship. I learned that Victor had won the Nobel Prize when I read a text from my father in all caps, ‘YOU WERE RIGHT!’”

Silverman and Ambros have gathered biannually over the past 30 years, skiing in Colorado or grabbing dinner in Chicago or Boston. The Nobel laureate even coached Silverman, a then grad student at Oxford University, through his first marathon in 2000, the London Marathon.

When Sungwook Choi, PhD’18, met his mentor in Worcester, he was surprised that the scientist who discovered microRNA was so easy to talk to and would throw birthday parties for everyone in the lab. Dr. Choi, who grew up in Seoul and moved to the U.S. to attend UMass Chan, dubbed Ambros and Lee his “U.S. father and mother,” recalling them as the first visitors at his bedside when he was in the emergency room with kidney stones.

In the Ambros lab, Choi focused on researching developmental genetics, analyzing a mutation in C. elegans of the lin-28 protein, and discovering that the mutation is related to development feedback in reproductive organs.

“Victor said the best experimental design is one that can disprove my hypothesis. He always tries not to form a bias when looking at a phenomenon. My thinking skills evolved with him,” said Choi, a principal scientist at HanAll Biopharma, in South Korea. “He’s an inspiring scientist and a motivational and supportive mentor.”

Samantha “Sam” Burke, PhD’15, remembers her mentor blasting Bruce Springsteen in the lab. Dr. Burke met Ambros at an accepted student reception at UMass Chan, striking up a conversation about their shared alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She later joined his lab.

“I always appreciated Victor’s genuine kindness,” said Burke. “When you have a conversation with him, it’s clear that he cares, wants to get to know you and hear your opinions. I never doubted that he believed in me, or that he thought I was smart.”

Burke’s work in the Ambros lab focused on two microRNAs in C. elegans that are also present in humans. She discovered that the pair work together to ensure that cells in the worm’s reproductive system migrate properly when the worm experiences environmental temperature changes.

“I appreciate how much Victor values all roles in science. He’s grateful for his education, his father’s education and the role that school teachers had on both of them,” said Burke, a ninth grade science and senior research elective teacher at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham. “When I said I wanted to be a teacher, he thought it was the greatest thing in the world and was excited for me to inspire students to explore science.”

“I try to bring his positivity to everything I do,” continued Burke, who was recently diagnosed with osteosarcoma, originating in her sacrum and metastasizing to her lungs. Her mentor’s philosophy extends to her approach to chemotherapy and treatment. “Victor always modeled that we need to keep trying, stay on task and not give up when things get hard. His positivity and advice of always chipping away at things is something I’ll carry with me.” ■