Dr. Vale received a B.A. degree in biology and chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. degree in neuroscience from Stanford University. His postdoctoral studies at the NIH Marine Biological Laboratory were on microtubule-based motors. Dr. Vale has been at UCSF since 1986 and currently is a Professor in the CMP department. Dr. Vale also holds appointments as Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Our laboratory is interested in the organization and functions of intracellular compartments in eukaryotic cells. For the past thirty years, our laboratory have studied how microtubules and their associated proteins, including molecular motors, transport and organize membrane organelles, such as the Golgi and endosomes, during interphase and how they segregate chromosomes by building the mitotic spindle during mitosis. In addition to our work on the cytoskeleton, our laboratory also studies the signaling pathways that govern T cell signaling and apoptotic cell clearance. Most relevant to this grant, our laboratory also has had a long-term interest in RNA biology, which have included discovering and studying the mechanism of mRNA transport in budding yeast, using ribosomal profiling to study translational regulation at different stages of the cell cycle, developing assays to observe protein translation in real-time from single mRNAs molecules, and the development of a new hypothesis involving RNA phase separation, which might contribute to certain types of neurodegeneration. We have approached our studies using a wide variety of techniques, including advanced light microscopy, single molecule studies, structural work (X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM), whole genome screening, and in vitro reconstitution and biochemistry. We consider this breadth of experimental approaches to be a strength of our laboratory and will apply our skills in light microscopy and cell biology to this grant. In addition to our scientific work, I am very interested in education and am leading the iBiology.org project, advancing mentoring of young scientists in India, promoting better practices is scientific publishing, and advancing education in microscopy for students spanning from K-12 to graduate school.