Robert Darnell is the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of Cancer Biology at The Rockefeller University and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Darnell uses high-throughput sequencing and other techniques to investigate the proteins that regulate RNA and thereby affect gene expression. He became interested in this system through his study of naturally occurring tumor immunity associated with a group of rare brain disorders. His interests have since expanded to neuron-specific RNA-binding proteins in the mammalian brain and more generally to functional genomics and human disease.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.