Leroy Hood

President, Institute for Systems Biology Dr. Hood has published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, received 12 patents, and co-authored textbooks in biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, and genetics, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He earned an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1968. His professional career began at Caltech where he and his colleagues pioneered four instruments--the DNA gene sequence and synthesizer, and the protein synthesizer and sequencer--which comprise the technological foundation for contemporary molecular biology. Dr. Hood was also one of the key players in the Human Genome Project. In 1992, Dr. Hood moved to the University of Washington to create the cross-disciplinary Department of Molecular Biotechnology. In his role as the William Gates III Professor of Biome