Professor Bob Goldberg

1998 Faculty Prize Recipient

Image of Bob Goldberg

Bob Goldberg is a Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology who has been on the UCLA faculty since 1976. He received his undergraduate degree in Botany from Ohio University and his doctoral degree in Plant Genetics from the University of Arizona. The goal of his research is to understand how genes are regulated during plant development. In collaboration with a biotechnology company, Professor Goldberg utilized genes identified in his lab to develop a novel system to genetically engineer for male fertility control in crop plants. This system was used to develop new hybrid varieties of canola plants that are in commercial production and have significantly increased yields of canola oil.

Professor Goldberg’s research has been supported continuously for the last 25 years by several federal agencies and biotechnology companies. He has been on the Editorial Boards of many internationally recognized journals such as Science, and was the founding editor of The Plant Cell, the leading journal in the area of plant molecular biology. He is a cofounder of Ceres Inc., a new Malibu-based Plant Genomics Company, and is the Director of The Seed Institute—an intercampus “institute without walls” within the University of California dedicated to unraveling the processes that control seed development. Professor Goldberg has given hundreds of lectures on his research worldwide and has received several awards recognizing his research contributions to the fields of plant molecular biology and agriculture.

Professor Goldberg is a recipient of two Distinguished Teaching Awards from the Biology Department, the Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award from the Alumni Association, as well as the Gold Shield Faculty Prize.

As a Faculty Prize recipient, Bob Goldberg has designed and taught two special Faculty Prize courses available to all undergraduates. The first was in the 2000 Winter quarter, and was entitled Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture, and Law.