Matthew Jacobson, Ph.D.

Background

Matt’s first academic job was substitute high school science teacher, which he reports was much more difficult than getting tenure at a top biomedical research institution.

Matthew (Matt) Jacobson serves as a faculty member in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is currently chair of the department. Dr. Jacobson serves on the scientific advisory board of Schrödinger, LLC and is a co-founder of Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ:GBT), a Third Rock Ventures portfolio company, and Circle Pharma, a UCSF and UC Santa Cruz spinout devising ways to disrupt a wide variety of diseases from inside cells.

Dr. Jacobson’s research interests are in the area of computational biophysics and computer-aided drug design. Software written by Dr. Jacobson and his collaborators is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and received UCSF School of Pharmacy Dean’s Recognition for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Jacobson previously served as director of the Graduate Group in biophysics and has served on the editorial boards of eight journals, including Biochemistry, PLoS Computational Biology and Structure.

Dr. Jacobson holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed his postdoctoral research at Oxford University and Columbia University.