Jim Haber

Jim Haber received his AB from Harvard College and his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. After postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he joined the Department of Biology at Brandeis in 1972. He has been a leading researcher in the fields of DNA repair and DNA damage checkpoints for over forty years. By using inducible site-specific DNA cleavage, his lab has been able to monitor in real time the kinetics of DNA repair processes. They have identified many of the components and molecular intermediates in both nonhomologous end-joining and in several pathways of homologous recombination. In 2011 he received the Genetics Society of America’s Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Genetics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.