Steve A. Kay, Ph.D.

Dr. Steve Kay is currently the Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and holds the Richard C. Atkinson Chair in the Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, and Distinguished Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. Previously, he was Chairman, Department of Biochemistry, Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla where he was a faculty member from 1996 to 2007. His academic research concerns the molecular genetic basis of circadian rhythms in plants, animals and humans. He was also recently the Director of Discovery Research at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), where he built a large Department of applying human genome science to biomedical research and drug discovery. Dr. Kay was also the founder, former Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Phenomix Corporation, a drug discovery and development company based in San Diego.

Dr. Kay received his bachelors’ degree in biochemistry from the University of Bristol in 1981 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the same institute in 1985. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University from 1985-1989, and then Assistant Professor there from 1989-1992 where he established his research program in circadian rhythms of the model plant Arabidopsis and the fruitfly, Drosophila. In 1992 Dr. Kay joined the University of Virginia, where he developed real-time luciferase reporter technology for measuring subcellular events in live plants and animals. This technology was used to identify several key clock genes in both systems using genetic screens. Dr. Kay joined TSRI in 1996 where his work has further expanded our knowledge of the molecular components and mechanism of action of circadian clocks, ranging from the mechanism of daylength sensing in plants to behavioral control in mammals.

Dr. Kay has received several awards, including a Keck Foundation Faculty Award in 1992, the Honma Prize for Life Sciences in 1999 and his work was cited in Science “Breakthroughs of the Year” consecutively in1997, 1998 and again in 2002. In 2008 he was elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences, in 2009 elected an AAAS Fellow, and in 2010 awarded the UCSD Chancellor's Associates Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.