Recipient of Waksman Honorary Lecturship

Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D.

"Small-molecule inhibitors of bacterial RNA
polymerase: myxopyronin."

Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D., is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, and Professor II of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University.  He directs a laboratory of approximately fifteen postdoctoral associates and graduate students and serves as Principal Investigator on three National Institutes of Health research grants ("Bacterial Transcription Complexes," "Small‑Molecule Inhibitors of Bacterial RNA Polymerase," and "Therapeutics for Drug-Resistant Bacteria"). His research focusses on the structure, mechanism, and regulation of bacterial transcription complexes, and on the development of inhibitors of bacterial transcription as antituberculosis agents and broad-spectrum antibacterial agents.  His research employs tools of structural biology, biophysics, and drug discovery. He received his A.B. (Biology, summa cum laude) and Ph.D. (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) degrees from Harvard University.  He performed graduate research at Harvard and the Institut Pasteur and was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows.  He has received the Searle Scholar Award, the Walter J. Johnson Prize, and the Schering-Plough Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He has more than one hundred twenty publications in peer-reviewed journals and more than twenty issued and pending patents.  He has been an invited participant and presenter at scientific meetings in the US and overseas.  He serves as editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.  He has served on the NIH Molecular Biology Study Section and on NIH special emphasis panels.  He is a member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and has been a member of the Working Group on Pathogen Security of the state of New Jersey and the Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project of the Center for International Security Studies.