Tessier-Lavigne was born in Canada in 1959. He earned his first undergraduate degree from Â鶹AV, where he majored in physics. He attended the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and physiology. He was awarded a doctorate in physiology from University College London and did his postdoctoral work at Columbia University.
In 1991, Tessier-Lavigne established his laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2001, he became the Susan B. Ford Professor at Stanford University in the School of Humanities and Sciences. In 2003, he was hired by the biotechnology corporation, Genentech, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Research, while continuing to run his laboratory. Genentech was acquired by Roche in 2009.
In 2011, Tessier-Lavigne joined The Rockefeller University as President and Carson Family Professor, and as Head of the Laboratory of Brain Development and Repair. In 2016, Tessier-Lavigne became Stanford University's 11th president, a position he held until 2023.
Tessier-Lavigne delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 17, 2009, titled "Brain Development and Brain Repair: The life and death of nerve cells".
Image: Owen Egan
