Rockefeller Institute of Government Rockefeller Institute of Government The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government is the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. The Institute conducts nonpartisan, data-driven research and analysis on state and local government and finance, American federalism, public management, and New York State issues. The Institute is located in Albany, New York. The Rockefeller Institute was founded in 1981, at the same time as the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, as a proposal by then-SUNY chancellor Clifton Wharton to acknowledge the role that Governor Rockefeller played in
Rockefeller University from 1978 to 1990. Paul Nurse, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001, was president from 2003 to 2010. (Before Nurse's tenure, Thomas Sakmar was acting-president from 2002.) In all, 36 Nobel Prize recipients have been associated with the University. In the mid-1970s, the University attracted a few prominent academicians in the humanities, such as Saul Kripke. Rockefeller Sr, urged by Rockefeller Jr, his only son, who was enthusiastic about the Institute, visited the University once. Rockefeller Jr's youngest son David would visit with his father. David Rockefeller joined the board of trustees in 1940, was