People

H. Robert Horvitz

puretechhealth.com

H. Robert Horvitz PhD is PureTech’s board observer, R&D Committee chair and external scientific collaborator. A Nobel laureate, he is an MIT biology professor, HHMI investigator and MGH neurobiologist. His company founding includes Epizyme, Mitobridge and Idun; the observer role is distinct from a board directorship. Gates Foundation scientific advisory biography: H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D. Robert Horvitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. He is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, neurobiologist (neurology) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a member of the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a member of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Horvitz’s research, focused on the roundworm C. elegans, has helped define evolutionarily conserved molecular genetic pathways important in human biology and human disease, including a major cancer-gene pathway and the pathway responsible for programmed cell death, or apoptosis. He has received many honors and awards. Horvitz is a member of the board of trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital and is chairman of the board of trustees of the Society for Science and the Public. He was president of the Genetics Society of America. He has served on many editorial boards, visiting committees, and advisory committees. Horvitz was an advisor adviser to the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. He was co-chair of the National Cancer Institute Working Group on Preclinical Models for Cancer, and a member of the National Human Genome Research Institute Advisory Council, the U.S. National Academies of Science and Institute of Medicine Committee on Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on Advancing Research in Science and Engineering. He also was a member of the advisory committee to the director of the National Institutes of Health, and he was a member of the council of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. Horvitz has been a consultant to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and venture capital companies.