John Coffin, PhD, is an American virologist. Raised in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, Coffin is a professor of Genetics and Molecular Microbiology at Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

 in Boston. He is also the director of the HIV Drug Resistance Program of the National Cancer Institute

National Cancer Institute

The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health , which is one of 11 agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI coordinates the U.S...

 (NCI) and serves as Special Advisor to the Director of the Center for Cancer Research at NCI. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 (elected in 1999) and a recipient of American Cancer Society professorship. He has advised policy committees at the national level regarding virus-related matters. Coffin was programme committee chair for the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections

Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections is an annual scientific meeting devoted to the understanding, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. The 18th conference was held in Boston, Massachusetts from 27 February to 2 March 2011...

 in 2011.

Coffin received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

. He performed PhD research with the late geneticist

Geneticist

A geneticist is a biologist who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a researcher or lecturer. Some geneticists perform experiments and analyze data to interpret the inheritance of skills. A geneticist is also a Consultant or...

 and Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winner Howard Temin at the University of Wisconsin. His postdoctoral advisor was Charles Weissmann

Charles Weissmann

Charles Weissmann is a Hungarian-born Swiss molecular biologist.Weissmann went to Zurich University and obtained his MD in 1956 and Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry in 1961. Weissmann was director of the Institute for Molecular Biology in Zurich, President of the Roche Research Foundation and...

 of the University of Zürich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

. Coffin began his faculty appointment at Tufts in 1975. Coffin's HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 research reflects his interests in molecular biology

Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

, virus-host relationships, pathogenesis

Pathogenesis

The pathogenesis of a disease is the mechanism by which the disease is caused. The term can also be used to describe the origin and development of the disease and whether it is acute, chronic or recurrent...

and viral evolution and population dynamics.