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Roger Kornberg is a professor of structural biology and the Mrs. George A. Winzer Professor in Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine where his research is focused on understanding the fundamental workings of gene regulation. Prof. Kornberg was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his seminal studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription, the biological process by which genetic information from DNA is copied to RNA. Prof. Kornberg obtained his PhD from Stanford University and did his postdoctoral studies with Aaron Klug and Francis Crick at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK) where he discovered the nucleosome. His Nobel Prize-winning work included discovery of Mediator, a protein complex required to facilitate gene transcription, as well the solution of the three-dimensional crystal structure of RNA polymerase II, the most complex protein structure solved to date. Kornberg’s research has provided new insights into the mechanism of disease when transcription goes awry and offers the potential for unlocking new therapeutic approaches. From 1984 to1992, Kornberg served as chair of the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford. Kornberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Prof. Kornberg has been honored for his work with the Eli Lilly Award, the Passano Award, the Ciba-Drew Award, the Gairdner International Award (shared with R. Roeder), the Hoppe-Seyler Lecture Award, the Harvey Prize from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), the ASBMB-Merck Award, the Pasarow Award in Cancer Research, the Le Grand Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer, and the 2005 Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize. | 