28 Facts About Ronald Vale

Ronald David Vale ForMemRS was born on 1959 and is an American biochemist and cell biologist.

Ronald Vale is a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco.

Ronald Vale's research is focused on motor proteins, particularly kinesin and dynein.

Ronald Vale was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award for Biomedical Research in 2019, the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in 2017 together with Ian Gibbons, and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2012 alongside Michael Sheetz and James Spudich.

Ronald Vale is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ronald Vale was the president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 2012.

Ronald Vale has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1995.

In 2019, Vale was named executive director of the Janelia Research Campus and a vice president of HHMI; his appointment began in early 2020.

Ronald Vale's mother, Evelyn, was a former actress; his father, Eugene, was a novelist and screenwriter.

Ronald Vale entered the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology in 1980.

Ronald Vale then spent one year as an NIH staff scientist in Tom Reese's laboratory at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.

Ronald Vale then heard of the research of Michael Sheetz and James Spudich, who used a video camera on a microscope to film myosin-coated beads moving along actin filaments.

Ronald Vale further demonstrated that purified organelles by themselves rarely moved on microtubules, but movement was observed after adding the cytosol of the axon.

Ronald Vale then discovered serendipitously that cytosol caused microtubules to translocate along a glass surface.

Ronald Vale did not finish his MD, and joined the University of California, San Francisco as an assistant professor in 1986.

Ronald Vale was promoted to associate professor in 1992 and then to full professor in 1994.

In that same year, working with Toshio Yanagida, Ronald Vale developed a single-molecule fluorescence assay for kinesin.

Since 2003, Vale has focused on dynein, a motor protein discovered by Ian R Gibbons in 1965.

In 2006, Ronald Vale's laboratory prepared recombinant dynein from yeast, and elucidated how it walked on microtubules using single-molecule microscopy.

Ronald Vale then worked with Gibbons to determine the structure of the dynein microtubule-binding domain.

Ronald Vale's team solved the structure of the dynein motor domain.

Ronald Vale has extended his research to other fields, including T-cell signalling and RNA biology.

Ronald Vale founded iBiology in 2006, a non-profit organization that produces and disseminates free online videos by leading biologists, speaking about biological principles and their research, and scientific training and professional development for practicing scientists.

Ronald Vale recently founded and produced The Explorer's Guide to Biology, a free online undergraduate "textbook" that provides a storytelling and discover-focused approach to learning biology.

In 2009, Ronald Vale established the Young Investigators' Meeting in India, which provides a mentoring and networking workshop for postdocs and junior faculty in India.

Ronald Vale founded ASAPbio in 2015, promoting the use of preprints and an open and transparent peer-review process.

Also in 2009, Ronald Vale founded the Bangalore Microscopy Course, held at the National Centre for Biological Research, which provides international training in light microscopy.

Nico Stuurman and Ronald Vale conceived of and developed Micro-Manager, a free and open-source microscopy software that was supported for many years through the Ronald Vale laboratory and now operates through the University of Wisconsin.