!!Michael Hall - Curriculum Vitae
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Michael N. Hall was born (1953) in Puerto Rico and grew up in South America (Venezuela and Peru).  \\
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He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France) and the University of California, San Francisco.  He joined the Biozentrum of the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 1987 where he is currently Professor and former Chair of Biochemistry.  \\
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Since 2023, he is also a Distinguished Principal Investigator at the Institute of Human Biology of Hoffmann-La Roche (Basel). Dr. Hall is a pioneer in the fields of TOR signaling and cell growth control.  \\
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He discovered the highly conserved, nutrient-activated protein kinase TOR (Target of Rapamycin) in the early 1990's, and subsequently elucidated its role as a central controller of cell growth.  He also discovered the two structurally and functionally distinct TOR complexes (TORC1 and TORC2) and described the two signaling branches mediated by these two complexes.  The two TOR complexes, like TOR itself, are highly conserved.  Thus, the two TOR complexes constitute an ancestral signaling network conserved throughout eukaryotic evolution to control the fundamental process of cell growth.  \\
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The discovery of TOR led to a fundamental change in how one thinks of cell growth.  It is not a spontaneous process that just happens when building blocks (nutrients) are available, but rather a highly regulated, plastic process controlled by TOR-dependent signaling pathways.  More recently, he demonstrated that mammalian TOR (mTOR) signaling in metabolic organs controls whole body growth and metabolism.  As a central controller of growth and metabolism, TOR plays a key role in development and aging, and is implicated in disorders such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.  \\
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Dr. Hall is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, has received numerous awards, including the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2009), the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014), the Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2017), the Sjöberg Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2020), and the Balzan Prize (2024), and has served on several editorial and scientific advisory boards. \\
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