Vanderbilt University has named John Kuriyan, one of the world’s leading structural biologists, as its next dean of the School of Medicine Basic Sciences.

“Kuriyan, Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator for more than 30 years, will succeed Lawrence J. Marnett, the founding dean of Basic Sciences, who has agreed to extend his leadership through December. Kuriyan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society, the independent scientific academy of the United Kingdom.

“Kuriyan, originally from India, studied for two years at the University of Madras before transferring to Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor of science in chemistry from Juniata College in 1981 and enrolled in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1986.

Read the full press release from Vanderbilt.