Tim Stearns
| Tim Stearns | |
|---|---|
Stearns in 2012
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| Born |
8 August 1961 New York, United States |
| Citizenship | US |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Genetic analysis of the yeast microtubule cytoskeleton (1988) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Botstein |
| Other academic advisors | Marc Kirschner |
| Notable awards | HHMI Professor, Searle Scholar |
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Tim Stearns (born 1961 in Huntington, New York) is an American biologist, and is the Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, with appointments in the Department of Genetics and the Cancer Center in the Stanford Medical School. He is the chairman of the Department of Biology, and is an HHMI Professor. Stearns is also a member of JASON, a scientific advisory group, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is on the editorial board of The Journal of Cell Biology.
Tim Stearns received his B.S. degree in Genetics from Cornell University, and did his undergraduate thesis work in the lab of Tom Fox on nuclear control of mitochondrial function in yeast. He received his Ph.D. degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. advisor at MIT was David Botstein, and the title of his thesis was "Genetic analysis of the yeast microtubule cytoskeleton." Stearns' thesis work was notable for identifying exceptions to the genetic complementation test that were useful for defining genetic interactions, and for the first use of the term "synthetic lethality" in the modern sense of two non-lethal mutations resulting in lethality in the double mutant. Stearns credits Botstein with instilling in him a commitment to teaching, and the belief that teaching and research go hand-in-hand.
Stearns is known for his work on problems in cell biology and developmental biology, with a focus on the structure and function of the centrosome and cilium of eukaryotic cells. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Marc Kirschner at UCSF, where he published work on gamma-tubulin and in vitro reconstitution of the centrosome. Stearns has been a faculty member in the Department of Biology at Stanford since 1993. His major research accomplishments include the identification and characterization of new members of the tubulin superfamily of proteins, elucidation of mechanisms of centrosome duplication, and identification of properties of the primary cilium.
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