Bruce William Stillman AO FAA FRS (born 16 October 1953) is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) since 1994 and President since 2003.
[3] Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer.
For his accomplishments, Stillman has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize in 2004[1] and the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize,[4] both of which he shared with Thomas J. Kelly of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,[5] as well as the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award for biomedical research, which he shared with John Diffley.
Another major accomplishment was the discovery of the Origin Recognition Complex (ORC), a key protein made up of six subunits that binds to cellular origins of DNA replication and coordinates the entire process of initiating a complete cycle of DNA replication throughout the entire cell genome.
[8][9][10] His group's recent studies have revealed the intricate details of the mechanism of the initiation of DNA replication and illuminated how this process is regulated throughout the cell cycle, including the mechanisms that prevent DNA replication from occurring more than once during each cell cycle.