Dr. Sir Richard J. Roberts

1993 Nobel Laureate for Medicine at New England Biolabs in Ipswich/USA

Sir Richard Robert’s discoveries changed the way biologists thought about genes. This led to decisive progress in many fields including cancer research.

Biography:

Dr. Sir Richard John Roberts is the Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs in Massachusetts/USA, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1993 for his discoveries of split genes and mRNA splicing. Being educated in England, his postdoctoral research was carried out in Professor J.L. Strominger’s laboratory at Harvard, where he studied the tRNAs that are involved in the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walls. He joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1972, where he began his work on the newly discovered Type II restriction enzymes. More than 100 such enzymes were discovered and characterized in Dr. Roberts’ laboratory which sequenced the 35,937 nucleotide Adenovirus-2 genome and wrote some of the first programs for DNA sequence assembly and analysis. At Cold Spring Harbor he reached the position of Assistant Director for Research under Dr. J.D. Watson. Dr. Roberts’ discoveries completely changed the way biologists thought about genes and led to decisive progress in many fields including cancer research.

Topic of keynote speech:

• Why you should love GMOs

Schedule:

Thursday, February 5, 2026:

14:00 Public keynote speech and dialogue at Academia Sinica in Taipei

Further information and free seat reservation via phone +886-2-2789-9380 or email
emma@as.edu.tw