Steve Briggs

Steve Briggs earned his PhD in Plant Pathology at Michigan State University in 1982 and then worked in the biotechnology industry: as a Research Fellow and Research Director at Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc.; President and CEO of the Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute; Head of Genomics, Syngenta AG; President and CEO of the Torrey Mesa Research Institute; and Senior Vice President for Research at Diversa, Inc. From 1987-1990 he was Senior Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 2004 he accepted a faculty appointment at the University of California San Diego. He has chaired two departments at UCSD: Cell & Developmental Biology in the Division of Biological Sciences; and Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Division of Physical Sciences. Briggs studies innate immunity and genome biology with an emphasis on proteome dynamics. He discovered the first plant disease resistance gene; sequenced the first crop genome; developed the first reverse genetics system for plants; and developed the first method to identify which protein-coding genes can be expressed in large plant genomes. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.