Tata Chairholders

  • Ethan Bier

    Ethan Bier

    Ethan Bier, a professor in the Cell and Developmental Biology Section and the Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor at UC San Diego, serves as the science director of TIGS-UC San Diego. During the past 25 years at UC San Diego he has used fruit flies to study basic developmental patterning processes that have been highly conserved during evolution. He also has used fruit flies to study mechanisms of human disease, focusing on understanding the mechanisms by which bacterial toxins contribute to breaching host barriers. Most recently, the Bier lab has developed a novel genetic method referred to as Active Genetics which allows adults to transmit a desired trait to nearly all their offspring rather than to only 50 percent of their progeny as occurs with traditional Mendelian inheritance. Active Genetics promises to revolutionize control of vector borne diseases (e.g., malaria) and pests and to greatly accelerate genetic manipulation of organisms for medical and agricultural research.

  • Mark Estelle

    Mark Estelle

    Mark Estelle is a Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego, where his research focus lies in plant biology. In plant biology, the ability to short circuit or work around standard Mendelian inheritance will have a tremendous impact on both fundamental and applied aspects of plant science. The rapid and precise manipulation of plant genomes will greatly facilitate the study of fundamental problems in plant biology. On the applied side, because many of our most important crops are polyploid, it can take years to introgress new desirable traits into elite varieties. Active Genetic tools will accelerate the development of new varieties that are adapted to our rapidly changing environment. Estelle's laboratory studies a plant hormone called auxin using two model plants: the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana and the moss Physcomitrella patens, which are used to help to inform efforts to develop Active Genetics in higher plants.

  • John Evans

    John Evans

    John Evans is professor of sociology, Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor in Social Sciences and the co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego. He received a PhD in sociology from Princeton University, followed by a postdoctoral appointment in the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at Yale University. He is the author of five books as well as over 60 articles, and has been a visiting or honorary faculty member at four international universities. Evans has spent his career examining the public reaction to technologies that are seen to raise foundational questions for society such as human genetic modification and human enhancement – questions often raised in philosophical or theological terms. For example, many of people’s concerns with technological intervention into “nature,” such as modifying mosquitoes or rats–to say nothing of humans–are expressed in these foundational terms.  With this research experience, and as co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics, Evans will help TIGS integrate into gene and society debates.

  • Ananda Goldrath

    Ananda Goldrath

    Ananda Goldrath is professor and chair of the Molecular Biology Section and holds a Tata Chancellor’s Professorship in the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego, where she started her lab in 2004. The Goldrath laboratory studies the unique transcriptional pathways and regulators of tissue-resident-memory T cells toward the discovery of novel targets that inform strategic design of therapeutic and protective vaccines, the development of which are of critical importance to human health. The laboratory is actively involved in a number of lines of study using a range of genetic, gene editing and gene drive approaches to enhance immunity in the context of infection and malignancy, topics of direct relevance to human health in India and beyond.

  • Karthik Muralidharan

    Karthik Muralidharan

    Karthik Muralidharan is a professor of economics and Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor at UC San Diego where he joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2008. Born and raised in India, he earned an A.B. in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard, an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge (UK), and a PhD in economics from Harvard. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a board member and co-chair of the education program at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) and a research affiliate with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). His primary research interests include development, public and labor economics.

  • Anita Raj

    Anita Raj

    Anita Raj, professor in the Division of Global Public Health, Department of Medicine and a Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor, is Director of UC San Diego's Center on Gender Equity and Health. She is a developmental psychologist with approximately 20 years of experience conducting research on sexual and reproductive health/HIV/STI, gender-based violence, substance misuse and abuse, and the intersection of these issues. Her current research is based in South Asia, West and Central Africa, the United States and Russia. This work includes qualitative and quantitative research to support intervention development and implementation, as well as efficacy and effectiveness trials to evaluate behavioral interventions. Currently, she has projects related to adolescent girls’ early marriage and reproductive/maternal health, gender equality and empowerment measures for monitoring and evaluation, sexual violence prevention programs, engagement of men and boys in family planning promotion and prevention of violence against women and HIV prevention and test and treat interventions.

  • Elliott Sober

    Elliott Sober

    Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor of Philosophy and William F. Vilas Research Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a visiting Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. His research is in the philosophy of science, especially in  the philosophy of evolutionary biology. In philosophy of biology, he has worked on the units of selection problem and on phylogenetic inference. In more general philosophy of science, he has worked on the conflict between Bayesianism and Frequentism, on the role of parsimony in scientific reasoning, on animal cognition,  the mind/body problem, causality, explanation and reductionism. Sober’s books include The Nature of Selection -- Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (1984), Reconstructing the Past -- Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference (1988), Philosophy of Biology (1993), Unto Others -- The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998, coauthored with David Sloan Wilson),  Evidence and Evolution – the Logic Behind the Science (2008), Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards? (2011), Ockham’s Razors – A User’s Manual (2015) and The Design Argument (2018).  

  • Suresh Subramani

    Suresh Subramani

    Suresh Subramani, the global director of the Tata Institute of Genetics and Society (TIGS) and Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professor, is a distinguished professor of molecular biology. He received his PhD (Biochemistry) in the laboratory of Howard Schachman at UC Berkeley, and was a post-doctoral fellow (Biochemistry) at Stanford University with Nobel Laureate Paul Berg. Subramani is world renowned for his work on the assembly and disassembly of subcellular compartments, notably peroxisomes, and the role of these processes in disease. He also has a strong record of international, national and UC service, having served in an advisory capacity for many organizations and granting agencies. Subramani also has extensive administrative experience, including his service as the first Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) at UC San Diego from 2010-2016. As the global director for TIGS, Subramani oversees research in India and at UC San Diego.