Michael Stallcup – 50th Reunion Essay

Michael Stallcup

1961 Micheltorena Street

Los Angeles, CA 90039

stallcup@usc.edu

(323) 797-1982

Spouse(s): Terry Riemer, (1980)

Education: Yale BA 1969; Univ of California Berkeley PhD 1974

Career: graduate student, UC Berkeley 1969–1974; postdoctoral fellow, UC San Francisco 1974–1979; Assistant/Associate Professor, Univ of South Carolina 1980–1985; Associate/Full Professor, Univ of Southern California 1985–present; Chair, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Univ of Southern California 2002–2015

Avocations: hiking, tennis, travel, travel photography, basset hounds, theater, art, reading, movies, gardening

College: Morse

After leaving Yale, I spent four and a half years in Berkeley getting a PhD in biochemistry and then six more years of research training at UC San Francisco. Those 10 years turned me into a lifelong liberal and introduced me to good culture, good food, and outdoor activities, especially hiking and backpacking. One backpacking trip in 1976 in the Sierras with three other UCSF postdocs turned into a lifelong annual (almost) tradition that is still ongoing after 35 trips, including an 11-day trek to the 14,000-foot base camp of 26,000-foot Annapurna.

But the most important thing that happened during that period was meeting Terry Riemer in San Francisco in 1979. We married the next year in her hometown, Los Angeles, but not until after we moved to Columbia, South Carolina for my first faculty job in the biology department of the University of South Carolina. OK, OK, so I didn’t really distinguish myself with my research and publications at UCSF, and it was the only place where I was offered a job. After three years there, Terry was through with the South and wanted to go back to the West Coast. Fortunately, my research was going better, and I got a job in LA at the Medical School of the other USC.

My research finally took off in the late ’90s. My lab members and I made some significant contributions, studying how steroid hormones (estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol) regulate the activities of genes and thereby the activities of cells. Our work has mainly been very basic science, how living organisms work at the cellular and molecular level. However, very recently our findings suggested a new idea for treating leukemia in patients who are resistant to the normal treatments, and we are following up on that.

Meanwhile, Terry and I have a wonderful life in LA, living in the Silver Lake neighborhood, which has received national and international attention recently as a great place to live. We have a lovely house with a drop-dead view of Hollywood, including the sign and almost everything west to the coast (when the haze clears out). We are currently hosting our sixth basset hound, Mardi Gras. She has her work cut out to match the longevity of our previous one, Ollie, who holds the record, surviving to 16. They have been the joys of our lives.

We love traveling and have many wonderful memories of the far-flung places we have visited. We hope to do more of that now that my career is winding down. Terry’s two knee replacements and one hip replacement a few years ago restored her mobility, so we have recently explored Patagonia, the Grand Canyon (an eight-day raft trip), and Ecuador (the highlands and Galapagos Islands).

Retirement is sounding better and better, especially since getting funding and publishing papers have gotten exponentially harder year by year. I plan to continue traveling, hiking, gardening, and loving Terry and the hounds for as long as possible!