Doogab Yi is a Stetten Fellow in the Office of NIH History for 2008-2009.

Doogab Yi received his Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2008. Dissertation title: The Recombinant University : Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Biotechnology at Stanford, 1959-1980.

Project Description: At the NIH History Office, I intend to complete two related projects on a migration of biomedical researchers into the biology of higher organisms from the 1960s to the 1980s and its epistemological and institutional consequences. First, I plan to complete a book manuscript on the history of recombinant DNA research and technology at Stanford University from the 1960s to the 1980s. With a focus on the theme of the technologization of life, this book will offer an alternative to standard accounts of the development of genetic engineering emerged during the patenting of Cohen-Boyer's recombinant DNA technology. In addition, this book will illuminate the commercialization of biomedical research in the academy in non-normative terms by focusing on the history of recombinant DNA patents. Second, I want to examine the history of tumor virology and cancer research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the later half of the twentieth century. My research project will investigate the broader scientific and institutional shifts during the 1970s by examining the NCI's intramural research programs. I in particular will focus on the Virus Cancer Program, which gained a top-priority position at the NCI and NIH in the 1970s. First of all, my investigation will provide a technical analysis on the development of cellular oncogene theory. More significantly, the history of the NCI's virus cancer programs will provide a useful vantage point of analyzing the history of biomedical research in the 1970s, including the shift in research focus of molecular biology toward the biology of higher organisms; cancer research and the emergence of big-scale, target-oriented biomedical research; and the rise of the biomedical complex in the late twentieth century.