Rudolf Jaenisch is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA. His research focuses on understanding epigenetic regulation of gene expression (the biological mechanisms that affect how genetic information is converted into cell structures but that don’t alter the genes in the process). He is a pioneer of genetic manipulation, stem cell biology, and disease modeling. His recent work has focused on understanding the mechanisms of induced pluripotency and the modeling of neurodegenerative disorders using human induced pluripotent stem cells.

Jaenisch received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Munich in 1967. Before coming to Whitehead, he was head of the Department of Tumor Virology at the Heinrich Pette Institute at the University of Hamburg. He has coauthored more than 375 research papers and has received numerous prizes and recognitions, including an appointment to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.