James Rothman

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James Rothman is the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical Biology at Columbia University. He has received many honors, including the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2002 and the King Faisal Award. Dr. Rothman received his B.A. at Yale University and his Ph.D. at Harvard.

Dr. Rothman began his career in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University in 1978. He was at Princeton University from 1988 to 1991, before coming to New York to found the Department of Cellular Biochemistry and Biophysics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he also served as vice chairman of Sloan-Kettering Institute. Dr. Rothman is widely credited as a key force in the rise to pre-eminence of science at Sloan-Kettering. In 2003 he left Sloan-Kettering to become a professor of physiology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and head of Columbia's Center for Chemical Biology. Dr. Rothman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Rothman’s award-winning research details how vesicles -- tiny sac-like structures that transport hormones, growth factors, and other molecules within cells -- know how to reach their correct destination and where and when to release their contents. This cellular trafficking underlies many critical physiological functions, including the propagation of the cell itself in division, communication between nerve cells in the brain, secretion of insulin and other hormones in the body, and nutrient uptake. Defects in this process lead to a wide variety of conditions, including diabetes and infectious diseases such as botulism.

In 1995, Dr. Rothman joined the Amersham PLC scientific advisory board. When Amersham was acquired by GE Healthcare in 2003, Dr. Rothman was appointed as the Chief Science Advisor to GE Healthcare.