Gerald M. Rubin, Ph.D.

I was struck by how many of them felt that the current U.S. academic research establishment is the only model for conducting basic scientific research and by how few of them seemed to be having fun. My own experiences were very different and have strongly influenced my views of the environment I would like to see us create at Janelia Farm. I was extremely fortunate in that I always felt that I had complete intellectual freedom, even as a graduate student and a postdoc, and I think it would have been unbearably painful to have felt otherwise.

Janelia will be the fourth institution at which I have held a “faculty-level” position, and I have changed the focus of my research slightly more frequently. During my career, I have had a very small laboratory where I could work with my own hands, supervised a group with a dozen postdocs, and run a large multi-institution genome project; each had its own challenges and pleasures. My most satisfying, and most significant, scientific experiences have come from successful collaborations. I consider having trained and mentored graduate students and postdocs an equal accomplishment to the scientific papers I have published. More than 50 of my former students and postdocs run their own laboratories, three are current HHMI investigators, and two are members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many of my friends and colleagues say I am too idealistic, but I see no reason why we can't create a place for scientists who are passionate and excited about what they are doing, where they are financially and emotionally supported by their colleagues and their institution, where they are encouraged to interact and collaborate, and where they are freed from many of the distractions that make life in a modern university so hectic and “scheduled.” While I will have my own research group at Janelia Farm, my main focus will be on creating a place where others can enjoy the benefits I enjoyed, and where their careers and spirits can thrive.

Gerald Rubin received his B.S. degree in biology from MIT in 1971; as an undergraduate, he spent two summers working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1974 for work done at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He began working on the fruit fly, Drosophila, as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David S. Hogness at Stanford University, where he participated in some of the earliest studies of gene organization using the newly developed recombinant DNA methods. His research has included studies of the structure and biology of transposable elements and molecular mechanisms of cell fate determination during development of the Drosophila retina. In 1982, he and Allan Spradling developed methods for making transgenic Drosophila, the first successful germ-line genetic engineering of a multicellular animal. Rubin served as the leader of the publicly funded effort to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome, which included collaborating with Celera Genomics Inc. to demonstrate that the whole genome shotgun method could successfully sequence an animal genome.

Rubin held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School and the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983 to assume the John D. MacArthur Professorship (held until 1999). He became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 1987. Rubin served as HHMI's vice president for biomedical research (2000-2002) and vice president and director of planning for Janelia Farm Campus (2002), and he became vice president and director, Janelia Farm Research Campus in 2003.

Rubin has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1987. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards, including the American Chemical Society Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, the National Academy of Sciences U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular Biology, and the Genetics Society of America Medal.