I am the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Born in the small farming community of Paris, Illinois in 1956, I received my Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, where I helped isolate the genes for the first trans-lesion DNA polymerase, UmuCD. I completed my post-doctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University with Ronald Davis, co-discovering a replication stress response pathway now known as the DNA damage response.

My laboratory explores a wide range of subjects. These include, but are not limited to, our continuing study of DNA damage response, the cell cycle, carcinogenesis and synthetic biology. I am a senior fellow of the American Cancer Society, a Pew Scholar, and a Howard Hughes Investigator. I have received numerous awards for my research, including the 2015 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.