Timothy J. Mitchison

Timothy J. Mitchison is the Hasib Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology; Deputy Chair and founding member of the Department of Systems Biology; and Co-director of the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Mitchison has worked throughout his career to elucidate the mechanisms cells use for physical organization and movement. He is known for discovering a central principle of self-organization in cells – that random exploration is followed by selective stabilization. He has also elucidated many key concepts underlying our understanding of how cells move and divide, the mechanisms cells use to position microtubules and actin filaments in the cytoplasm, and the means by which cells generate forces by protein polymerization dynamics. The Mitchison lab is currently  integrating microscopy, image analysis, and biochemistry to study the dynamic organization of the microtubule cytoskeleton of the cell, using eggs of the frog Xenopus laevis as a model system. In addition to this basic scientific research, Haig works to understand how microtubule- and mitosis-targeting drugs such as taxol kill cancer cells. His cancer research includes the development of small molecules that activate tumor-resident macrophages by mimicking viral infection, and cause an innate immune attack of the cancer. Mitchison is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society, in addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership. His numerous articles appear in prominent journals such as Nature Chemical Biology, Science, and Science Translational Medicine.