Microbial Growth & Development

BIOGRAPHY

Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD, is Chair and James B. Duke Professor of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University, also holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, and serves as director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis. His research focuses on the evolution of sex in fungi and the roles of sexual reproduction in microbial pathogens, how cells sense and respond to nutrients and the environment, the targets and mechanisms of action of immunosuppressive and antimicrobial drugs, and the genetic and molecular basis of microbial pathogenesis and development. As an EMBO long term fellow at the Biozentrum in Basel Switzerland, he implemented a novel yeast chemical genetic screen and discovered Tor as the conserved target of the immunosuppressive, antiproliferative drug rapamycin, in collaboration with Mike Hall (Biozentrum) and Rao Movva (Sandoz Pharmaceuticals). Dr. Heitman has received the Burroughs-Wellcome Scholar Award in Molecular Pathogenic Mycology and the ASBMB AMGEN and IDSA Squibb awards for significant contributions using molecular biology to understand human disease and infectious diseases, including his pioneering studies on the molecular basis for immunosuppressive drug action in transplantation. In addition Dr. Heitman received the 'Faculty Member of the Year' award for Microbiology in 2011. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2003), and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2003), the American Academy of Microbiology (2004), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004), and the Association of American Physicians (2006).

Dr. Heitman was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1992-2005, and served as director for the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomics from 2002-2009. Since 1998 he has served as an instructor in residence at the Marine Biological Laboratory Molecular Mycology Course, Woods Hole, MA, and he is a member of the advisory committees for the Fungal Genome Initiative of the Broad Institute and the Fungal Genome Program for the JGI-DOE. He is an editor of the journals PLoS Pathogens, Eukaryotic Cell, Fungal Genetics and Biology, Genetics, and Current Genetics, serves on the editorial boards for PLoS Biology, Current Biology, Cell Host & Microbe, and Virulence and has edited four textbooks on fungal pathogenesis and genetics. Dr. Heitman received undergraduate and master's degrees with general and special honors from the University of Chicago. He received medical and doctoral degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program of Cornell University Medical College and the Rockefeller University, and was an EMBO long-term post-doctoral fellow at the Biocenter in Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Heitman has been a member of the Faculty of 1000 for just over a decade, since 2001.