Education
He earned his Bachelor of Surgery in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Eric H. Davidson.
He earned his Bachelor of Surgery in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Eric H. Davidson.
He was a Professor at Stanford University from 1982 to 2001 before joining Genentech. While a graduate student, he worked with Keiichi Itakura and Arthur Riggs to help synthesize Somatostatin for Herb Boyer at Genentech. After finishing his graduate studies, he did a brief postdoc with Davidson and later with Eric Kandel and Richard Axel at Columbia University.
While at Columbia, he extended his previous work with recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid to identify the egg-laying hormone (ELH) gene family of neuropeptides.
Richard joined the Stanford University faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in 1982 and later the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. He was an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1990 to 2001.
While at Stanford, he cloned and identified the proteins that control neurotransmitter release notably those in the Syntaxin family of transport proteins, Rab GTPases, and SNAREs. In 2001, he was recruited from Stanford to join Genentech as a Senior Vice President and Chief Research Officer replacing Dennis Henner.
In 2008, was named the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Research.
He is concurrently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California San Francisco.
National Academy of Sciences. American Academy of Arts and Sciences]
After the acquisition of Genentech by Hoffmann-Louisiana Roche, he was appointed the Head of Genentech Research and Early Development and a member of the enlarged Roche Corporate Executive Committee.