Gerald M. Rubin

Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Related to his genomics work, Rubin's lab is notable for development of genetic and genomics tools and studies of signal transduction and gene regulation. Rubin also served as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2003–2020) and founding executive director of its Janelia Research Campus.

Education and early life Rubin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950, attending the Boston Latin School. Rubin completed his undergraduate degree in biology at MIT, working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory during the summer. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, for studies on 5.8S ribosomal RNA supervised by Sydney Brenner.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Rubin did postdoctoral research at Stanford University with David Hogness.

Rubin's first faculty position was at Harvard Medical School, followed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington; in 1983 he accepted an appointment as the John D. MacArthur Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator in 1987. He is currently the MacArthur Professor of Genetics emeritus, Genomics and Development, in Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, and a Senior Group Leader at the Janelia Research Campus.

As the director of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, he led the public effort to sequence Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly).