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Dr. Banerjee is a professor and the chair of the Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology Department at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA), of which he has been a part since 1988. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Biological Chemistry. He is also codirector of the UCLA Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Dr. Banerjee teaches courses in genetics that encourage undergraduates to participate in research, and he is the director of the UCLA Interdepartmental Minor in Biomedical Research. Dr. Banerjee has also taught many genetics and developmental biology classes to undergraduate and graduate students.
Dr. Banerjee received his Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where he also did postdoctoral research training with Prof. Seymour Benzer, initiating research in molecular neurogenetics of eye development in Drosophila and working on the sevenless locus. In his own laboratory at UCLA, Dr. Banerjee's research focuses on genetic dissection of cell cycle and cell fate determination during neuronal and hematopoietic development.
In 2000, UCLA named Dr. Banerjee one of the "Best 20 Professors" of the "Bruin Century." He has also been recognized with the Luckman, Ebi, and Gold Shield awards, the highest research and teaching awards in any subject, including humanities and social sciences, at UCLA. Dr. Banerjee's laboratory has authored many publications and review articles. He has served on several National Institutes of Health genetics study sections and has been a scientific adviser to research institutes and foundations. Dr. Banerjee is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
RESEARCH ABSTRACT SUMMARY:
As a researcher in the fields of Drosophila genetics and developmental biology, Utpal Banerjee studies signal transduction and transcriptional control of neural and hematopoietic development. Dr. Banerjee's HHMI project uses functional genomics to train undergraduates in all aspects of doing research and to enable them to produce high-quality data that have meaningful scientific impact. Using the Drosophila eye, undergraduates work in Dr. Banerjee's lab to examine patterns of gene expression and trace the lineage of cells during development.
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Photo: Joe Toreno
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