Tomas Kirchhausen
Tomas Kirchhausen is a Professor of Cell Biology and of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Springer Family Chair of Pediatrics and a Senior investigator at Boston Children’s Hospital. The focus of his lab is on understanding processes that mediate and regulate cellular membrane remodeling, the biogenesis of organelles, and the ways by which viruses, biologicals and oligonucleotides are delivered to the cell interior.
Kirchhausen is an expert on mechanisms of intracellular membrane traffic and a leading authority on the molecular structures and interactions that underlie clathrin-mediated endocytosis. He has helped define the structure, interactions, and assembly-disassembly mechanisms of clathrin and many of its associated proteins. His work over more than three decades has been characterized by pioneering use of emerging technologies — from the early days of molecular cloning to contemporary live-cell imaging.
He received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas.