Richard Morimoto, PhD

AREAS OF SPECIALTY:

  • Proteostasis of Healthy Aging

  • Cell Protective Stress Responses

  • Protein Misfolding and Aggregation in Aging and Disease

Richard Morimoto, PhD

Dr. Richard I. Morimoto is the Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology and Director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research at Northwestern University.

Rick received his B.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, subsequently received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the laboratory of Professor Murray Rabinowitz, University of Chicago in 1978. He then conducted his postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Matthew Meselson in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. He was concurrently a Tutor in Biochemical Sciences at Harvard College. In 1982, Morimoto joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He has served as the Chair of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology, the Dean of The Graduate School, and the Associate Provost of Graduate Education at Northwestern. He has given talks at universities and symposia throughout the world, and has been a Visiting Professor at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, Beijing University, École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Kyoto University, Kyoto Sangyo University, Osaka University, University of Rome, Technion University in Israel and the University of Cambridge. He was a founder of the biotech company Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc in Cambridge MA, to develop small molecule therapeutics to treat diseases of protein homeostasis.

Awards & Honors

Some of his honors include:

  • Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Profesor - University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

  • Fyodor Lynen Lecturer – German Society of Biochemistry

  • Commandeur – Ordre des Palmes Académiques, France

  • Fellow – Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

  • Elected Fellow – American Academy of Arts and Sciences

  • Elected Fellow- American Association for the Advancement of Science

  • MERIT Awards from the National Institute for General Medical Sciences and the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa – Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland