Dr. Robert Tjian, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology since 1979, recently also served as President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2009-2016.

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Trained as a biochemist at Cal and Harvard, he was a pioneer in studying how genetic information in our DNA is decoded to produce mRNA and proteins.  During 4+ decades as an MCB faculty at Cal, he taught 1000’s of undergrads while doing biomedical discovery research. He has received many scientific awards including election to the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, was California Scientist of the Year and he has been an HHMI investigator since 1987 and President of HHMI 2009-2016.  He also co-founded Tularik, Inc. and more recently, Eikon Therapeutics while launching several other biotech companies as a Science Partner of venture capital firm – The Column Group (TCG).