Charalambos Kyriacou, PhD

Professor of Behavioral Genetics
University of Leicester
Leicester, England

From Brandeis to Infinity and Beyond

Dr. Kyriacou was one of the first postdoctoral fellows in the Hall lab. Along with Michael Rosbash, Dr. Kyriacou and Jeff Hall together studied biological rhythms in the fruit fly.

Dr. Kyriacou joined the Hall lab during the great blizzard of ’78 and was among Jeff Hall’s first cohort of students/postdocs at Brandeis. Dr. Kyriacou’s main colleagues were Laurie Tompkins, Ralph Greenspan, and Kristen White, all of whom remain firm friends to this day. During his first year, Dr. Kyriacou studied fly love songs and discovered the male song rhythm, which moved Jeff’s laboratory into the field of biorhythm research. He left in 1981, now having “become bosom buddies (with Jeff) when he was no longer ‘the boss.’” They consolidated their work over the next few years. Together with Michael Rosbash, they also initiated the molecular analysis of circadian and song rhythms.

In the past fifteen years or so, the work in Dr. Kyriacou’s lab has moved into working on the functional implications of natural clock gene variation and has adopted a more evolutionary and ecological approach. They also have begun working on “omic” studies of mouse clocks. Dr. Kyriacou concluded by noting that his experience at Brandeis and with Jeff defined his subsequent scientific career in genetics and molecular biology.