As Director of Community Outreach & Education Programs of the Department of Environmental Medicine and the Environmental Health Sciences Center, as well as Director of the University of Rochester’s Center for Science Education and Outreach,I am responsible for developing and coordinating a wide variety of programs for students (elementary through high school), teachers, and the general community. These include hands-on science programs for local schools, summer science camps, and science teacher workshops, run through our Life Sciences Learning Center. Our community outreach programs coordinated through the Environmental Health Sciences Center include childhood lead poisoning prevention initiatives, a community advisory board, newsletters and community forums.

     My science education experiences have included adjunct faculty positions at several colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area. My pre-college science outreach experience included the development of molecular genetics programs through the University of Pennsylvania’s successful Penn Summer Science Academy. I have been at the University of Rochester since 1995, first developing science education programs in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology (1995-1998) and, since 1998, in Environmental Medicine.

     My research experience includes graduate and postdoctoral work on retroviral gene transfer and gene therapy. While a graduate student at Columbia University, I developed two novel retroviral packaging cell lines that have subsequently been used by hundreds of laboratories worldwide. These two cell lines, GP+E86 and GP+EnvAm12, are currently being licensed through Genetix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. I also completed two postdoctoral fellowships—at the Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals Corporation.

Selected Publications

Markowitz, D., DuPre, M., Holt, S, Chen, S. and Wischnowski, M. 2006. Family Secrets: The Bioethics of Genetic Testing. The Science Teacher 73(8): 28-32.

Markowitz, D. 2004. Evaluation of the long-term impact of a university high school summer science program on students’ interest and perceived abilities in science. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 13(3):395-407.

Knox, K, Moynihan, J, and Markowitz, D. 2003. Evaluation of short-term impact of a high school summer science program on students’ perceived knowledge and skills. Journal of Science Education and Technology 12(4):471-478.

Wolfe, J., Kyle, J., Sands, M., Sly, W., Markowitz, D., and Parente, M. 1995. High level expression and export of beta-glucuronidase from murine mucopolysaccharidosis VII cells corrected by a double-copy retrovirus vector. Gene Therapy 2:70-78,.

United States Patent 5,278,056, January 11, 1994. Retroviral packaging cell lines and process of using same. Arthur Bank, Dina G. Markowitz, and Stephen P. Goff.

Cournoyer, D., Scarpa, M., Mitani, M., Moore, K., Markowitz, D., Bank, A., Belmont, J., and Caskey, T. 1991. Gene transfer of adenosine deaminase into primitive human hematopoitic progenitor cells. Hum. Gene Ther. 2:203-213.

Markowitz, D., Goff, S., and Bank, A. 1988. Construction and use of a safe and efficient amphotropic packaging cell line. Virology 167:400-406.

Markowitz, D., Goff, S., and Bank, A. 1988. A safe packaging line for gene transfer: Separating viral genes on two different plasmids. J. Virol. 62:1120-1124.