Alum to Alum: A Conversation With Nobel Prize Winner Ardem Patapoutian

by Lori Dajose (BS ‘15)

On the night of October 4, 2021, Ardem Patapoutian (PhD '96) was sleeping peacefully, his phone notifications turned to silent as usual. When he was awakened by a call from his father at 2 a.m., he worried that something might be wrong. Instead, his father told Ardem he had received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the Nobel committee couldn't get through to his phone.

Patapoutian, who is a professor in the department of neuroscience at Scripps Research, won the Nobel for his research on how cells sense touch and pressure. In this conversation with Lori Dajose (BS '15), Patapoutian discusses his upbringing in Lebanon, his support for immigrants in science, and how his time at Caltech spent living in a building once inhabited by famous biologists influenced the trajectory of his life and career (read an excerpt about that below).

Here' is an excerpt of the video above:

Ardem Patapoutian: I used to live in this place called Prufrock House. It's this house that is surrounded by parking structures and graduate housing on Wilson Avenue. It was this place where four graduate students stayed. It's an old house. We had a cooking club where 10, 12 people would come in and we would all take turns cooking. It was just a fantastic environment. The lab was across the street, two-minute walk. And I remember working very hard because I just also really loved it.

Patapoutian with his niece, Talia. Photo courtesy of Ardem Patapoutian.

Patapoutian and family at Caltech’s commencement ceremony in 1996. Photo courtesy Ardem Patapoutian.

Patapoutian with Barbara Wold. Photo courtesy Ardem Patapoutian.

Patapoutian (center) with his committee at Caltech after defending his PhD thesis. From left to right: Elliot Meyerowitz, Barbara Wold, Ardem Patapoutian, David Anderson, Scott Fraser. Photo courtesy Ardem Patapoutian.

[Barbara] Wold's lab was a really fantastic environment. I have so many great memories from doing science to running, including this 24-hour relay race called the KELROF (Kellogg's Eighth Light Regiment of Foot), where you team up with 10 people and each run 1 mile and give the baton to your teammate. Then you do this for 24 hours, which means you run about once an hour for just 1 mile, which is by itself not hard, but 2 a.m., when it comes time to run again, it's pretty tough. But everything is done in a fun way. Lots of great memories. Most importantly, Caltech is where I learned to do science, asking the right questions and planning to do the right experiments.

Lori Dajose: Is Prufrock House that strange building that kind of looks a little medieval?

AP: Gothic. Yeah, exactly.

LD: I've always wondered about that building.

AP: It was also a wonderful place to be and has a huge history. Meselson and Stahl, these very famous molecular biologists who did some very early experiments [on DNA replication in the 1950s], one of them actually had stayed in the Prufrock House as well. I think he was in the same room as I stayed. There was lot of history in that building.