Dr. Richard J. Roberts is the Chief Scientific Officer at New England Bio labs, Ipswich, Massachusetts. He received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1968 from Sheffield University and then moved as a postdoc to Harvard. From 1972 to 1992, he worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. His work on Type II restriction enzymes led to the discovery of 70 of the first 100 such enzymes. In 1975 he became the chief consultant for New England Bio labs and moved there permanently in 1992. Studies of transcription in Adenovirus-2 led to the discovery of split genes and mRNA splicing in 1977, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1993. His laboratory pioneered the application of computers in DNA sequence analysis. Most recently he works on DNA methyl transferases in bacteria and the first crystal structure for the HhaI methyl transferase led to the discovery of base flipping. He now leads a Nobel campaign supporting GMOs.
