Robert Tjian

Dr. Robert Tjian, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology since 1979, recently also served as President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2009-2016.

Trained as a biochemist at Cal and Harvard, he was a pioneer in studying how genetic information in the DNA is decoded to sustain life. During nearly 4 decades on the faculty here at Cal, he taught thousands of undergrads while doing biomedical discovery research. He has received many scientific awards including election to the US National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, California Scientist of the Year and he has been an HHMI investigator since 1987.

Dr. Tjian's research aims to understand how the molecular machinery that reads DNA operates to drive gene expression in human cells. His recent work focuses on deciphering how regulatory genes control the ability of embryonic stem cells to self-renew and differentiate into various cell lineages by using live-cell single-molecule imaging modalities.

He has also co-founded biotech companies and a venture capital fund and served as a scientific advisor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in biomedical sciences.