Marc W. Kirschner, Ph.D.

Marc W. Kirschner, Ph.D. graduated from Northwestern University in 1966 and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Following postdoctoral research at Berkeley and at the University of Oxford, he was appointed as Assistant Professor at Princeton University in 1972 and full Professor in 1978. In 1978, he moved to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco as a Professor. After fifteen years at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Kirschner moved to Harvard Medical School in 1993 to become the founding Chair of the Department of Cell Biology. In 2003, he established the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and became its first Chair. In 2009 he was named University Professor, Harvard’s highest professorial distinction.

Dr. Kirschner’s laboratory investigates three broad, diverse areas: regulation of the cell cycle, the role of cytoskeleton in cell morphogenesis, and mechanisms of establishing the basic vertebrate body plan.