Roles
Sylvester Professor
Professor and Founding Chairman, Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center
-
Biography
Weinberger is currently the Sylvester Professor and Founding Chairman of the Department of Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He was previously the William and Ute Bowes Distinguished Professor of Virology, director of the Gladstone Center for Cell Circuitry, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the only person to ever win all the NIH Director's High-Risk, High Reward Awards, including the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, NIH Director's Transformative Research Award, NIH Avant Garde Award, and NIH Director's New Innovator Award.
He received his undergraduate degree in biophysics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1998. He completed his PhD in Biophysics, with a focus on HIV, from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He received postdoctoral training at Princeton University as a Lewis Thomas Fellow, working with Thomas Shenk and David Botstein.
After completing his fellowship at Princeton, he joined the University of California, San Diego, as an assistant professor for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Afterwards, he moved to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as an associate professor in biochemistry and biophysics before transitioning to the Gladstone Institutes, the non-profit research institution associated with UCSF where he rose to William and Ute Bowes Distinguished Professor, director of the Gladstone Center for Cell Circuitry, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. As of 2025, he serves as the Sylvester Professor and Founding Chairman of the Department of Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. -
Education & Training
Education
Post Graduate Training
-
Honors & Awards
No result found
-
Research Interests
The research group discovered and characterized the HIV latency circuit, which provided the first evidence that stochastic transcriptional fluctuations ("noise") drive biological fate decisions. This work catalyzed a body of literature reporting noise-driven decisions from bacteria to cancer. The group went on to propose the dogma-challenging theory that HIV latency is a "hardwired" virus program and discovered generalized stochastic latency programs in other viruses. These findings have gained acceptance, been recognized with numerous honors—including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, Transformative Research Award, Avant-Garde Award, NIH Merit Award, as well as Pew, Blavatnik, Sloan, and Keck recognition—and led to novel HIV-cure candidates, such as Janssen’s T66-LNP.
More broadly, these studies established that transcriptional fluctuations have a functional role in cells and are a feature rather than a flaw of cellular biology. The group discovered noise-enhancer molecules, now widely used for applications such as circadian rhythm modulation, and discovered an ancient cellular "dither" pathway that regulates noise to potentiate embryogenesis.
On the therapeutic front, the lab develops novel antiviral strategies to circumvent the evolution of antiviral resistance. The team proposed the concept of "open-loop lethality," leading to a new class of antiviral feedback-disruptor molecules. They also proposed the concept of—and coined the term for—Therapeutic Interfering Particles (TIPs). TIPs are first-in-class, single-dose, escape-resistant antivirals now entering Phase-I clinical trials for HIV. Initial data convinced the Department of Defense to initiate the INTERCEPT program, which funded dozens of virology labs worldwide from 2015 onward, and led to the discovery of the first TIPs. Following FDA reviews, the DoD and NIH funded the group's TIP clinical trials for HIV. -
Publications
Disclaimer: The information presented in this section has been consolidated using AI and machine learning technologies. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, errors may occur. If you identify any inaccuracies, please use this link to inform our data team. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and helps us improve the quality of our content.