H. Robert Horvitz

Dr. H. Robert (Bob) Horvitz has been an Advisor to MPM since 2005 and has served as the Chairman of MPM’s Advisory Boards since 2007.

Having joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Biology faculty in 1978, he was named the David H. Koch Professor of Biology in 2000. He was appointed a Member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in 2000 and a Member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research in 2001. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Bob received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering and characterizing genes that control programmed cell death (apoptosis), findings that have provided the basis for understanding many aspects of human biology and disease.

Bob is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and The Royal Society of London. He is a recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience. He received a Ph.D. in Biology in 1974 from Harvard University and S.B. degrees in Mathematics and Economics from MIT in 1968.