Joseph Schlessinger

Joseph Schlessinger is the co-Founder of Kolltan, a member of Kolltan's Board of Directors and Chairman of Kolltan's Scientific Advisory Board. Schlessinger is the Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and the William Prusoff Professor at Yale School of Medicine and the Director of the Cancer Biology Institute of Yale University. From 1990 to 2001, he was Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Professor at New York University Langone Medical Center. He was also the director of the Skirball Institute of NYU from 1998 until 2001. Before co-founding Kolltan, he co-founded SUGEN, Inc. in 1991 and in 2001 he co-founded Plexxikon. He was also the chairman of Plexxikon's Board of Directors and a member of Plexxikon's Scientific Advisory Board from 2001 until 2011. From 1980 to 1991, Schlessinger was the Ruth and Leonard Simon Professor in Cancer Research in the Department of Chemical Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Schlessinger was research director at Rorer Biotechnology, Inc. in Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1990. He has also held positions at Meloy Laboratories, Inc. in Rockville, Maryland from 1985 to 1988. Schlessinger has authored or co-authored more than 475 scientific articles and papers focusing on signal transduction, growth control mechanisms, receptor structure functions and the biophysics of proteins. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies, a member of the European Academy of Science, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is on the editorial boards of Cell, Molecular Cell, and the Journal of Cellular Biology as well as many other journals. Schlessinger's academic honors include the Drew Ciba Prize, the Antoine Lacassagne Prize, the Dan David Prize, the Distinguished Service Award of Miami Biotechnology, an Honorary Membership of the Japanese Biochemical Society, Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Haifa, the Medal of Danica Hrvatska Order from the Republic of Croatia and the Penzcoller-AACR International Award for Cancer among many others. He presented the E.J. Cohn Lecture at Harvard Medical School, the Edmond Fischer Lecture at the University of Geneva, the Lamport Lecture at the University of Seattle, the Harvey Lecture at Rockefeller University, the Opening Keynote Lecture at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting, the NIH Director Lecture, the Distinguished Lecture on Molecular Targets for Cancer Prevention at the AACR in Baltimore, Maryland, the NIH-WALS Lecture in Bethesda, Maryland and the Twenty-fourth Medical Scientist Lecture Series at UC Irvine, the Ef Racker Lecture in Biology and Medicine, at Cornell university as well as numerous others. Schlessinger received his B.Sc., Magna Cum Laude, in chemistry and physics and his M.Sc., Magna Cum Laude, in chemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemical Physics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel in the field of biophysics.