Randy Schekman, UC Berkeley/HHMI. “Tackling Parkinson’s Disease with Basic Science”

Prof. Schekman was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with James E. Rothman and Thomas C. Südhof.

Randy Schekman is a university professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

He studied the enzymology of DNA replication as a graduate student with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. His current interest in cellular membranes developed during a postdoctoral period with S. J. Singer at the University of California, San Diego. At Berkeley, he developed a genetic and biochemical approach to the study of eukaryotic membrane traffic. Among his awards are the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research and in 2013, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof.

In 1999, he was elected president of the American Society for Cell Biology and in 2006 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the NAS. In 2011, he stepped down from the PNAS position to become editor-in-chief of an open access journal, eLife, sponsored by the HHMI, Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Society.