Dr. Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA). He received a B.S. in botany from Ohio University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant genetics from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Goldberg has received several awards at UCLA: the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Biology Department, the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Division of Molecular and Cell Biology, the Luckmann Distinguished Teaching Award from the Academic Senate and Alumni Foundation, and the Gold Shield Faculty Research Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and Research. In addition, he was honored to have been named one of the top 20 professors in UCLA’s 75-year history. He was also awarded the National Order of Scientific Merit Grà Cruz from the President of Brazil. In 2001, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Goldberg created The Plant Cell, organized the first plant-oriented Keystone Meetings, and served as program director of several U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Genetics and Crop Improvement Grant panels. More recently, he established the Seed Institute—a multiuniversity collaboration dedicated to uncovering all the genes required to “make a seed”—which is the focal point of his present research efforts. He has also been the director of the American Society of Plant Biologists Education Foundation.

Bob Goldberg’s research focuses on how to make a seed. He is using a novel plant, the Scarlet Runner Bean, which has “giant” embryos, to identify the genes required to program seed development. He will combine a lecture course for non-science undergraduates that uses senior science majors as teaching assistants with a laboratory experience that will use state-of-the-art genomic technologies to uncover genes that are responsible for seed formation.