Former Lab Partners Reconnect, Reflect on Fordham’s Influence

Fordham Newsroom

Above (from left): Gloria Coruzzi and Christopher Proto pose for a 1976 yearbook photo in a Fordham lab. Four decades later, they recreated the moment in Coruzzi’s lab at NYU, where Proto teaches part time at the dental school.They’ve been teasing each other about the 1976 Maroon yearbook photo for years.
“Just look at my hair and beard!” said Christopher Proto, D.D.S. “I was wearing the uniform of the day—flannel shirt. You can tell who lived on campus and more or less rolled out of bed, and who commuted. Maybe that’s why Gloria looked more put together.”
Like Proto, Gloria Coruzzi, Ph.D., majored in biology at Fordham, but after graduation, the lab partners went their separate ways to start careers and families. She earned a doctorate in molecular and cell biology at NYU, where she’s the Carroll & Milton Petrie Professor and a former chair of the biology department. He earned a doctorate in dental surgery at Georgetown and has been in private practice since 1981.
They reconnected about six years ago, Proto said, after a chance encounter in a restaurant on Arthur Avenue, near Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.
Proto was having lunch with his wife, Monica, and their son, Andrew, FCRH ’12, when he spotted Coruzzi walking back to a table to join her husband and son. “I stopped her and said, ‘Gloria?’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Chris?’” The friends embraced, and introduced their spouses and sons. “We couldn’t believe that we reconnected in the Bronx after all these years,” he said. “It was like a movie.”
They later met for lunch near NYU, where Proto is now a clinical instructor at the College of Dentistry, and eventually brought two other former classmates into the fold: David Perricone, M.D., a pediatrician; and Diane Esposito, Ph.D., who earned a ...

Read More