Dr. Randy Schekman is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studied the enzymology of DNA replication as a graduate student with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. His current interest in cellular membranes developed during a postdoctoral period with S. J. Singer at the UC Diego. Among his awards are the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof. He served as the Editor of the Annual Reviews of Cell and Developmental Biology and as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the NAS and eLife. Beginning in 2018, Schekman has served as the Scientific Director of “Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Disease” a major philanthropic effort organized along with The Michael J. Fox Foundation to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms in the initiation and progression of Parkinson’s Disease (https://parkinsonsroadmap.org).

Schekman’s laboratory investigates the mechanism of vesicular traffic in the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells. Currently the lab investigates the mechanism of biogenesis of extracellular vesicles including how small RNAs are sorted for secretion in exosomes and the means by which these vesicles are internalized and function in target cells.