Richard H. Scheller (born October 30, 1953) was the former chief science officer and leader of therapeutics at 23andMe. He also served as the former executive vice president of research and early development at Genentech. Before joining Genentech, he worked as a professor at Stanford University from 1982 to 2001. He received the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1989, the W. Alden Spencer Award in 1993, and the NAS Award in Molecular Biology in 1997. In 2010, he shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Thomas C. Südhof and James E. Rothman. In 2013, he shared the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Thomas Südhof. He also received the Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biography
He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, where he studied under Eric H. Davidson. During his graduate studies, he collaborated with Keiichi Itakura and Arthur Riggs to help create Somatostatin for Herb Boyer at Genentech. After completing his Ph.D., he did a short postdoctoral research position with Davidson and later worked with Eric Kandel and Richard Axel at Columbia University. At Columbia, he continued his research on recombinant DNA to find the egg-laying hormone (ELH) gene family of neuropeptides.
In 1982, Scheller became a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and later joined the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. He was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1990 to 2001. At Stanford, he discovered and studied proteins that control the release of neurotransmitters, including those in the Syntaxin family, Rab GTPases, and SNAREs.
In 2001, Scheller moved to Genentech as a senior vice president and chief research officer, taking over from Dennis Henner. In 2008, he became the chief scientific officer and executive vice president of research. After Genentech was bought by Hoffmann-La Roche,
Awards
- 1989 – Alan T. Waterman Award
- 1993 – W. Alden Spencer Award
- 1997 – NAS Award in Molecular Biology
- Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Wisconsin-Madison
- 2010 – Kavli Prize in Neuroscience
- 2013 – Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
- 2014 – Distinguished Alumni Award from California Institute of Technology
- 2015 – National Academies of Science
- Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Personal life
He is married to Susan McConnell, a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, and lives on Stanford Campus.