Dr. Richard Morimoto is a world-renowned molecular biologist whose pioneering work has fundamentally advanced our understanding of cellular stress responses and protein homeostasis. He currently serves as the Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology and Director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research at Northwestern University, where he has been a faculty member since 1982. A distinguished Japanese American scientist born in Chicago, Illinois, Morimoto earned his B.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago before completing his Ph.D. in biology at The University of Chicago in 1978 under Professor Murray Rabinowitz. Following postdoctoral research with Professor Matthew Meselson at Harvard University, he established his independent research program at Northwestern, where he has also previously served as Chair of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology, Dean of The Graduate School, and Associate Provost of Graduate Education. His distinguished career trajectory from postdoctoral researcher to institutional leader exemplifies his commitment to both scientific discovery and academic excellence.
Dr. Morimoto's groundbreaking research has transformed our understanding of the heat shock response and the critical role of molecular chaperones in maintaining proteome stability. He was the first to clone the human Hsp70 gene and characterize the human heat shock response, elucidating the mechanisms of stress-inducible transcriptional control and the biochemical properties of human Hsp70 in protein-folding homeostasis. His laboratory made seminal discoveries in cloning vertebrate heat-shock transcription factors and demonstrating the tissue-specific and stress-responsive pathways they regulate. Morimoto's work has profound implications for aging and disease, as he demonstrated that Hsf1 is essential for lifespan enhancement through the insulin-signaling pathway and showed how aggregation-prone proteins can trigger a cascade of proteome collapse that contributes to neurodegenerative diseases. These fundamental insights into proteostasis networks have provided crucial frameworks for understanding and potentially treating age-related protein misfolding disorders.
Beyond his research achievements, Dr. Morimoto has received numerous prestigious honors including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, the Ordre des Palmes Académiques from France, and NIH MERIT awards recognizing sustained excellence in research. His leadership extends to directing the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research, where he continues to advance innovative approaches to studying proteostasis networks using C. elegans and human iPS cells. Currently, his laboratory employs genetic, molecular, proteomic, and genomic methods to investigate how aging and age-associated diseases disrupt protein homeostasis in metabolic disorders, cancer, and neurodegeneration. As a dedicated mentor and scientific leader, Morimoto continues to shape the future of molecular biology through his transformative research on cellular stress responses and their critical role in health and disease. His ongoing investigations into stress regulatory pathways promise to yield new therapeutic strategies for maintaining proteome integrity throughout the lifespan.
