H. Robert Horvitz

Dr. H. Robert Horvitz received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. He is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Neurobiologist (Neurology) at the Massachusetts General Hospital; and a Member of the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and a Member of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Dr. Horvitz received S.B. degrees in Mathematics and in Economics from MIT. He performed his graduate studies at Harvard University in the laboratories of Drs. James Watson and Walter Gilbert and received his Ph.D. in Biology for biochemical and genetic studies of the control of gene expression by the bacteriophage T4. Dr. Horvitz joined Dr. Sydney Brenner at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and there began his studies of the development and behavior of the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr. Horvitz has been an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research involving C. elegans has helped define evolutionarily conserved molecular genetic pathways important in human biology and human disease, including the pathway responsible for programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

Dr. Horvitz is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science and the Public. He was President of the Genetics Society of America. He has served on many editorial boards, visiting committees and advisory committees. He was co-chair of the National Cancer Institute Working Group on Preclinical Models for Cancer and a member of the National Human Genome Research Institute Advisory Council, of the U.S. National Academies of Science and Institute of Medicine Committee on Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on Advancing Research in Science and Engineering. He is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and of the Council of the U.S. Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Horvitz received the U.S. National Academies of Science Award in Molecular Biology; the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health; the Ciba-Drew Award for Biomedical Science; the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize; the Gairdner Foundation International Award; the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology; the Genetics Society of America Medal; the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience; the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences; the Peter Gruber Foundation Foundation Genetics Prize; the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor; the Alfred G. Knudson Award of the National Cancer Institute; and the U.K. Genetics Society Mendel Medal.

Dr. Horvitz is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Horvitz received an Honorary M.D. from the University of Rome and Honorary D.Sc. degrees from Cambridge University and Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Horvitz has been a consultant to the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research and the venture capital company MPM Capital as well as to a number of biotechnology companies, and he cofounded the biotechnology companies NemaPharm, Inc., Idun Pharmaceuticals, Enlight BioSciences and Epizyme, Inc.