 
Dr. Thomas D. Pollard |
Dr. Thomas D. Pollard, who joins the University on July 1 as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, is a pioneer in cell biology research and an outspoken advocate for biomedical research funding.
Pollard comes to Yale from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, where he was a member of the faculty and served as the institute's president from 1996 to 2000.
Pollard pioneered research on the molecular basis of cellular motility, or movement, and has a long-standing interest in the molecular mechanism of cytokinesis, a process in cell division. He discovered the first unconventional myosin, a fibrous protein in cells, and studies the role of myosin in cytokinesis. In addition, he characterized the assembly of actin filaments and discovered and characterized proteins that regulate actin filament assembly. This work has culminated recently in a detailed molecular explanation for how assembly and disassembly of actin filaments produce cellular movements.
Pollard has authored or coauthored nearly 300 scientific papers and scholarly articles on his work.
A graduate of Pomona College, Pollard ,earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He taught at Harvard Medical School 1972-78 and joined the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as the Bayard Halsted Professor and director of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy in 1977. At Johns Hopkins, was the founding director of a graduate program in cellular and molecular medicine and was honored with teaching awards seven times. He joined the Salk Institute in 1996. He has also served since 1997 as adjunct professor at the University of California at San Diego and has had a long affiliation with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Pollard was president of both the American Society for Cell Biology and the Biophysical Society, and on behalf of these organizations he was active politically in support of funding for biomedical research. He chaired the Commission on Life Sciences at the National Research Council 1993-98.
In 1996, Pollard shared Brandeis University's Rosensteil Medical Research Award with James Spudich of Stanford University. In 2000 he received the Howard T. Ricketts Award from the University of Chicago. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MERIT Award from the National Institute of General Medical Science, a Public Service Award from the Biophysical Society and a Winston Churchill Overseas Fellowship from Churchill College in Cambridge, England.
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