Robert V Farese

Robert V. Farese Jr., (born October 29, 1959) is an American physician-scientist and professor of Cell Biology at the Sloan Kettering Institute of Memorial Sloan Kettering. He is an internationally recognized leader in the study of cellular lipid metabolism and has made seminal contributions to our understanding of energy storage as triglycerides in cellular organelles called lipid droplets.

Education and career

Farese received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Florida and an M.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and clinical fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). At Harvard School of Public Health, Farese served as Chair of the Department of Molecular Metabolism.

Dr. Farese is a co-founder and board member of the Bluefield Project to Cure Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) Research. His work has been recognized by a Bristol-Myers Squibb “Freedom to Discover Award,” Their lectures on lipid droplet biology are featured in the online iBiology series.

The Farese and Walther laboratory also studies lipid metabolism and lysosomal dysfunction in the central nervous system. Research has focused on sphingolipid metabolism and how derangements lead to neurodegeneration and diseases such as FTD or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Awards and honors

American Society for Clinical Investigation (1999) Association of American Physicians (2002) Avanti Lipid Award, ASBMB (2016) Roy Greep Award for Outstanding Research, Endocrine Society (2018) ASBMB-Merck Award for Outstanding Research in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2022)