LODISH Harvey F.

Dr. Lodish is a Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Professor of Biology and Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and an Associate (Foreign) Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Current efforts of his research group focus on identifying genes and extracellular signals that regulate red blood cell development, and elucidating the roles of many long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that are essential for the differentiation and function of erythroid and myeloid cells, and others essential for formation of white and brown adipose cells.

Most recently his laboratory developed culture systems for generating mature human red blood cells from hematopoietic stem cells. With Flagship Pioneering he founded Rubius Therapeutics, a company that uses gene- and enzyme- modified red blood cells as vehicles for the long- term introduction of many novel therapeutics, immunomodulatory agents, and diagnostic imaging probes into the human body.

Dr. Lodish is a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston Children’s Hospital, where he is Chair of the Board of Trustees Research Committee. From 2008 to 2016 he was the Founding Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the group charged with oversight of the state’s 10- year billion investment in the life sciences. He was a founder and scientific advisory board member of several companies including Genzyme, Inc., Arris Pharmaceuticals, Inc, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and has served on the scientific advisory boards of numerous biopharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Lodish is the lead author of the textbook Molecular Cell Biology; the eighth edition was published in April 2016; the book has been translated into 12 languages. During the 2004 calendar year Dr. Lodish served as President of the American Society for Cell Biology.