Dr. Robert Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for biomedical research and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), director of the Ludwig Center of MIT, and American Cancer Society Research Professor.

Weinberg is best known for his discoveries of the first human oncogene Ras and the first tumor suppressor gene Rb. He is a co-founder of Verastem, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing drugs to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells. 

He and Douglas Hanahan wrote the seminal paper, “The Hallmarks of Cancer”, published in January 2000, that gave the six requirements for one renegade cell to cause a deadly cancer. It became the most cited cancer research paper of all time and, in 2011, they published an updated review article entitled “Hallmarks of Cancer: the next generation”

He is also the author of the textbook The Biology of Cancer, as well as two important accounts intended for a wider audience: One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins and Racing to the Beginning of the Road: The Search for the Origin of Cancer.

Among many awards, Weinberg is a recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, National Medal of Science, the Keio Medical Science Prize, and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in recognition of his valuable and pioneering contributions in the field of Biomedical Sciences and for his productive trajectory related to the genetic and molecular basis of neoplastic disease.  he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

Weinberg is a recipient of the 2004 Wolf Prize in Medicine, 2009 Hope Funds Award in Basic Research, 2013 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work, and 2021 Japan Prize.