Rockefeller University

Rockefeller University is a private graduate research university on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It became a university in 1965 and has no undergraduate college. Its defining structure is a biomedical institute organized around independent laboratories rather than a conventional undergraduate faculty.

Research is grouped in laboratories spanning biochemistry, structural biology, immunology, neuroscience, genetics, and related biomedical fields. Graduate students work in about 70 to 80 laboratories. Clinical and translational links include the university hospital and the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program with Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The campus enrolls on the order of 200 graduate students and a similar scale of postdoctoral researchers. More than 25 Nobel laureates have been affiliated as faculty or alumni. Notable scientists associated with the institution include Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, and Ralph Steinman.

The David Rockefeller Graduate Program leads to the Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, with limited required coursework and early laboratory rotations. All Ph.D. students receive a stipend and tuition support. Research runs year-round rather than on a sharp undergraduate term structure. Students live and work on a compact East River campus in New York.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Rockefeller University lists 5 graduate programs across 4 subjects, all of them doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, chemical engineering and environment, climate & sustainability.