Krzysztof Palczewski

Krzysztof Palczewski, a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, is a Polish-born American biochemist and pharmacologist serving as a Donald Bren Professor and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. He holds the Irving H. Leopold Chair of Ophthalmology and is the founding Director of the Center for Translational Vision Research at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute.

Biography

His master and doctoral degrees are from the University of Wrocław (1980) and the Wrocław University of Science and Technology (1986) respectively. In 1986, he joined Paul Hargrave's laboratory at that time leading the field in studies of rhodopsin at the University of Florida, thus launching a scientific career in the U.S. that brought him from the biochemistry and structural biology of the visual cycle components to drug discovery and novel treatments of eye diseases. He joined the faculty of the University of Washington (1992-2005), rising to the level of Professor in the departments of Ophthalmology, Pharmacology and Chemistry, including an appointment at the E.K. Bishop Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology. There, he published his most cited work to date, Crystal Structure of Rhodopsin: A G protein-coupled receptor.