Richard P. Lifton

Richard Priestley Lifton (born 1953) is an American biochemist who has been serving as the 11th and current president of Rockefeller University since September 2016.^[1]

Richard P. Lifton
11th President of Rockefeller University
Incumbent
Assumed office September 1, 2016 (2016-09-01)
Preceded by	Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Personal details
Born	1953 (age 71–72)
Education	Dartmouth College (BA) Stanford University (MD, PhD)
Awards	Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2008) Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014)
Scientific career
Fields	Genetics
Institutions	The Rockefeller University Yale University Stanford University
Thesis	The organization and expression of the Drosophila melanogaster histone genes and interspersed mobile elements (1986)
Doctoral advisor	David Hogness

Education and career

He earned his B.A. in biological sciences from Dartmouth College and in 1986 he got his M.D. and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University.^[2] He trained at Brigham and Women's Hospital before starting his lab at Yale in 1993.^[3] He has been awarded the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences for his discovery of genes that are associated with the regulation of blood pressure.^[4] In 2014 he was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work.^[5] He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator since 1994. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.^[6]

In May 2016, Lifton was named the president of Rockefeller University.^[7] He succeeded Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who left to assume the presidency of Stanford University.

See also

• Physician-scientist