Raymond L. Rodriguez

Dr. Rodriguez is a professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology and executive director of the Global HealthShare Initiative at UC Davis. He received his Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz in 1974 and was an A.P. Giannini Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the UC Medical Center in San Francisco from 1974-77. While at UCSF, Dr. Rodriguez developed technologies that now serve as the foundation for the biotechnology industry. His paper on the construction of the first NIH-approved molecular cloning vector is a Citation Classic, having been cited over 5500 times. Dr. Rodriguez joined UC Davis in 1977 and is actively involved in research and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 1988, he was a Visiting Professor in the International Center for Biotechnology at Osaka University, Japan, and in 1991 he was a visiting scientist with the Human Genome Project at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From 1989 to 1992, Dr. Rodriguez chaired a US/Japan bilateral committee to establish the framework for sequencing the rice genome. From 2003-10, he served as director of the NIH Center of Excellence for Nutritional Genomics, a multi-institutional research program studying the impact of diet-genome interactions on human health. For his leadership in the field of human health and biotechnology, Dr. Rodriguez was selected as the 2008 Distinguished Lecturer by the USDA-ARS Beltsville Center and in 2009 he received an Honorary Doctorate from Nara Institute for Science & Technology, Nara Japan. In 2012, He was elected as a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has published numerous articles and books on molecular biology, health and biotechnology, and currently holds over 20 U.S. patents in the field of human health. Dr. Rodriguez has consulted for several Fortune 500 food companies, the Institute for the Future and national and international government agencies such the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Japanese Ministries of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and Agriculture, Food and Forestry (MAFF). In 2006, he published, Nutritional Genomics: Discovering the Path to Personalized Nutrition (Wiley & Sons, 2006) and his latest book, Impact of Dietary Regulation of Gene Function on Human Disease (Taylor & Francis CRC) was published in 2011. His current research investigates the impact of dietary signals on aging and the epigenetic regulation of gene function. As an entrepreneur, Rodriguez founded Ventria Bioscience and served board chairman from 1993-2000. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Davis Bioscience, at technical and management consulting company serving the needs of the biotech industry since 1991. In recent years, Dr. Rodriguez has devoted his attention to the science of team science (SciTS), and increasing the representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).