Rudolf Jaenisch

Rudolf Jaenisch is a leading biologist whose pioneering work in making transgenic mice has led to important advances in understanding cancer, neurological and connective tissue diseases, and developmental abnormalities and has explored basic questions such as the role of DNA modification, genomic imprinting, and X chromosome inactivation. He is a Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His laboratory is renowned for its expertise in cloning mice and in studying the myriad factors that contribute to the success and failure of cellular reprogramming. More recently the lab has focused on using the iPS cell system to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Autism.

Dr. Jaenisch is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He has received numerous prizes and recognitions, including the Boehringer Mannheim Molecular Bioanalytics Prize, the first-ever Peter Gruber Foundation Award in Genetics, the Robert Koch Prize for Excellence in Scientific Achievement, the March of Dimes Prize, and the United States National Medal of Science. Before coming to Whitehead, he was head of the Department of Tumor Virology at the Heinrich Pette Institute at the University of Hamburg. He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Munich in 1967.