Randal J. Kaufman is the director and professor of the Degenerative Diseases Program, Neuroscience and Aging Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Kaufman received his BA at the University of Colorado and went on to obtain his Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Stanford University. Kaufman continued his postdoctoral studies at the Center for Cancer Research at M.I.T., where he was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate Phillip Allen Sharp. From 1994-2011, Kaufman served as Professor of Biological Chemistry and Internal Medicine, Endowed Chair of Medicine and Investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute at the University of Michigan Medical School.
In 2011, Kaufman joined SBP as a Principal Investigator and has continued to focus on the signaling mechanism of unfolded protein response and its role in the pathogenesis of a wide spectrum of diseases. The members of the Kaufman Lab are currently working on Diabetes, Liver Cancer and Alzheimers. To learn more about our current projects, see our research page.