Stephen Smale, Ph.D.

Stephen T. Smale is a molecular immunologist and biochemist who arrived at UCLA in 1990 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology within the UCLA School of Medicine. In 1999, he was promoted to Professor and, in 2014, to Distinguished Professor, in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, which spans the UCLA College of Letters and Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine. From 1990 to 2007, he was also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Smale graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University, with Honors and Distinction in Chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Tjian. He then was a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation postdoctoral fellow with Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute, MIT. At UCLA, Dr. Smale previously served as Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, Director of Basic and Translational Research for the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Program, Co-Director of the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program, and founding Chair of the School of Medicine’s Research Initiative in Immunity, Inflammation, infection, and Transplantation (I3T). He currently serves as Vice Dean for Research in the David Geffen School of Medicine. The research in Dr. Smale’s laboratory focuses on gene regulation during inflammatory and innate immune responses and during lymphocyte development and leukemogenesis.