Winner of the Salk Institute Medal for Research Excellence An internationally recognized authority on the genetic basis of human cancer, Robert A. Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1992, he earned the Gairdner Foundation International Award for Achievements in Medical Science. He is also a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He is the first Director of the Ludwig Cancer Center at MIT. Over the past three decades, Weinberg has made breakthrough discoveries in the molecular and genetic roots of cancers. His lab discovered the first oncogene in 1982 and the first tumor suppressor gene in 1986. Most recently, Weinberg and his colleagues were the first to define the genetic hallmarks that a normal human cell must acquire to be transformed into a human cancer cell.
