Nationality American Fields Neuroscience Parents Hsue-Chu Tsien | Role Professor Name Richard Tsien Notable students Karl Deisseroth | |
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, University College of Oxford Books Electric Current Flow in Excitable Cells Similar People Karl Deisseroth, Gerald Crabtree, Feng Zhang, Kryn Stankunas | ||
Richard Winyu Tsien (born 3 March 1945), is a Chinese-born American neurobiologist and engineer. He is the Druckenmiller Professor of Neuroscience, Chair of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, and Director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute at New York University Medical Center, and also an emeritus faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine .
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Roger Y. Tsien, winner of nobel prize in chemistry is his brother.
Early life
Tsien was born in Tating, Kweichow, China and is a descendant of the King of Wuyue Tsien Liu. Soon after his birth, Tsien's family moved to the United States.
Education
Tsien received BS in 1965 and MS in 1966 both in electrical engineering and both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tsien then won a Rhodes Scholarship and went to study in UK at Wadham College, Oxford from 1966 to 1969. Tsien obtained PhD in biophysics from Oxford in 1970.
Career
From 1968 to 1970, Tsien was a Weir Junior Research Fellow at University College, Oxford. From 1969 to 1970, Tsien was a teaching fellow at Balliol College, Oxford.
In 1970, Tsien went back to the United States, and became an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine from 1970 to 1974. From 1974 to 1979, Tsien was an associate professor in the same department, and was promoted to full professor in 1979.
In 1988, Tsien went to Stanford and founded the Stanford University Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, where he also served as the first chairman. From 1991 to 2001, Tsien was the Director Silvio Conte - National Institutes of Mental Health Center for Neuroscience Research. From 1988 to 2011, Tsien was the George D. Smith Professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. From 2000-2011, Tsien served as Co-Director for the Stanford Brain Research Center.
Tsien did important work on calcium channels, their mechanisms and roles in cell signaling pathways. Tsien's research also helps us understand the long-term plasticity of synapses.
From 1987 to 1988, Tsien was the President of the Society of General Physiologists. In August 2000, Tsien also served the Section Chair of Neurobiology of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Tsien's youngest brother Roger Y. Tsien, a chemist, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.