Matt Jacobson, PhD

Matthew Jacobson, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he developed an interest in physical chemistry and wrote a textbook with his advisor Dick Zare, Laser Experiments for Beginners. As a Hertz Fellow, he earned his PhD in physical chemistry at MIT, and then completed post-doctoral research at Oxford University and at Columbia University. His research interests are in the area of computational biophysics and computer-aided drug design. Professor Jacobson is the author of over 100 publications and software, that were written by him and his collaborators, and that are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry.

Moreoever, Professor Jacobson serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Schrödinger, LLC, and is a founder of Global Blood Therapeutics (a Third Rock Ventures portfolio company). He is the recipient of many awards including: the NSF CAREER award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a School of Pharmacy Teaching award. Currently, he serves as director of the Graduate Group in Biophysics, and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Biochemistry and PLoS Computational Biology.