Howard Lipshitz is a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. After graduating from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, he completed a Ph.D. in biology at Yale University. He then carried out postdoctoral work in the biochemistry department at Stanford University, where he characterized the first long non-coding RNA, from the bithorax complex of Drosophila. He was a professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology before moving to Toronto.

Lipshitz’s research focuses on post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression by RNA-binding proteins. He has pioneered genome-wide studies of the maternal-to-zygotic transition in Drosophila embryos and the use of phage displayed synthetic antibodies to study RNA-binding proteins, their target RNAs, their partner proteins and their role in mRNA stability and translation.

He has served in leadership positions at the SickKids Research Institute and as chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. He has also been a Searle Foundation Scholar, the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Biology, the Qiushi Chair Professor in the Zhejiang University School of Medicine and the Gordon and Betty Moore Distinguished Scholar in Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

Lipshitz is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also served on the board of directors of the Society for Developmental Biology, is a founding member of the Rare Diseases: Models and Mechanisms Network (Canada) and a member of its scientific advisory committee since its inception. He was a senior editor of G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. and is currently editor-in-chief of the Genetics Society of America’s flagship journal, Genetics.