Joseph Puglisi, Ph.D.

Joseph (Jody) Puglisi is a Jauch Professor in the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His work focuses on the biophysical and structural analysis of RNAs and RNA-protein interactions and his group use broad biophysical and biochemical methods to understand the interplay of structure and dynamics in a variety of systems, in particular translation.  Born and raised in scenic New Jersey, he received a B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1984 from The Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1989 working with Ignacio Tinoco, Jr. After postdoctoral research in Strasbourg and MIT, he joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1993.  He moved to Stanford University in 1997, where he was Chair of the Department of Structural Biology from 2004 to 2014. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.