Andrew Patrick Kowalczyk PhD

Andrew Kowalczyk was born and raised outside of Amsterdam NY in the beautiful Mohawk Valley region of upstate NY. This region of New York became well known in the mid 1900’s as the carpet capital of the world – the rug city - before most of the carpet mills and textile companies moved to Dalton and other North Georgia venues. The Mohawk valley is also a region rich in Native American and Revolutionary War history, and was once considered the gateway to the frontier regions of Western NY and Ohio. Andrew attended college at a SUNY school in Plattsburgh NY, just south of the Canadian border region of Northern NY and Vermont. It was here that he met his future wife, Patricia Kelly. In the summer of 1987 Andrew joined the graduate program in the Physiology Department at Albany Medical College and pursued thesis studies with Paula McKeown-Longo in the field of fibronectin matrix biology and endothelial cell-matrix interactions. Tricia also joined Albany Medical College in 1988 and worked for most of the next 5 yrs with Dr. Fred Minnear on the regulation of endothelial barrier function by thrombin. During this period (1988) Andrew and Tricia married, mostly as a mechanism for continued financial support for Andrew’s studies and his unwillingness to ‘get a real job”. In 1992 Andrew and Tricia moved to Chicago to pursue studies at Northwestern University Medical School in the magnificent mile region of Chicago’s north side. Andrew worked with Dr. Kathleen J. Green on desmosome assembly while Tricia worked with Rex Chisholm (aka Kathy Green’s husband) on myosin structure function using a Dictyostelium model system. Several important and life changing experiences occurred while Andrew and Tricia resided in Chicago, including the famous 3-peats by the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordon, and the arrival of Paul Kowalczyk in the winter of 1996. Also, it was at Northwestern that Andrew developed a “more than skin deep” interest in epidermal biology. In 1998 Andrew and Tricia both joined the Department of Dermatology here at Emory, with Andrew holding a secondary appointment in Cell Biology.