Richard Anthony Jefferson - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Richard Anthony Jefferson (born 1956) is an American-born molecular biologist, who developed the reporter gene system GUS

GUS reporter system

The GUS reporter system is a reporter gene system, particularly useful in plant molecular biology. Several kinds of GUS reporter gene assay are actually available, depending on the substrate used...

, a widespread molecular technique. In 2003 he was named by Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

as one of the 50 most influential technologists in the world.

Studies and Career

Born in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, Jefferson studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

at the College of Creative Studies

College of Creative Studies

The College of Creative Studies is one of the three undergraduate colleges at the University of California, Santa Barbara, unique within the University of California system in terms of structure and philosophy...

, and obtained his BA (Molecular Genetics) in 1978. He then moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder

University of Colorado at Boulder

The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...

for his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

, where he first developed the GUS reporter system.

As a postdoc he worked at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

: there he adapted the GUS assay for the use in plants. His GUS system was a breakthrough in plant molecular sciences, useful for the development of efficient transformation methods for crop plants. During his postdoc in Cambridge

Cambridge

, he also managed the world's first field release of a transgenic food crop (June 1, 1987).

In 1989, Jefferson joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Food and Agriculture Organization

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and...

as senior scientist, the first molecular biologist in this position. Since then he traveled, worked and taught in many developing countries. He left the organization in 1991, when he founded a private research institution, CAMBIA

CAMBIA

Cambia is an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation and promoting change for the public good. Through the development and dissemination of new technologies, tools, and collaborative instruments, including the Patent Lens and Biological Open Source ...

. His non-profit company

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

moved later to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, due to the involvement in the Asian rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

biotechnology

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...

programs of the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

.

In 2009, with new support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jefferson moved with Cambia to the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, as Professor of Science, Technology & Law, to become Director of the Initiative for Open Innovation.

Richard Jefferson is known also for his expertise regarding intellectual property

Intellectual property

Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...

. The BiOS

Biological Innovation for Open Society

BiOS is an international initiative to foster innovation and freedom to operate in the biological sciences. BiOS was officially launched on 10 February 2005 by Cambia, an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation...

Initiative, which he founded in 2005, is active in the promotion of open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

biology of a similar philosophy to that in informatics.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Studies and Career

See also

External links