Team

Roger Kornberg, Ph.D. 
Professor of Structural Biology, Stanford University

Professor Kornberg received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1972 for his demonstration of the diffusional motions of lipids in bilayer membranes, termed flip-flop and lateral diffusion. He was a postdoctoral fellow and member of the scientific staff at the Medical Research Council, where he discovered the nucleosome. Professor Kornberg joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1978 as Professor in the Department of Structural Biology. He and his research group made several fundamental discoveries concerning the mechanisms and regulation of eukaryotic transcription, ultimately leading to Professor Kornberg's 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription. Professor Kornberg's research group discovered the Mediator for transmission of gene regulatory signals to the RNA polymerase machinery and determined the atomic structure of the machinery in action. He is author of over 200 published papers and a Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.