Phillip Sharp, Ph.D.

Director

Phillip Sharp, Ph.D., has served on our board of directors since January 2017. 

Dr. Sharp has been an institute professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, since 1999. Prior to that, he led MIT’s Department of Biology from 1991 to 1999 before assuming the directorship of the McGovern Institute from 2000 to 2004. Much of Dr. Sharp’s scientific work has been conducted at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute), which he joined in 1974 and directed from 1985 to 1991. Dr. Sharp is the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Dr. Sharp is a member of the board of directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Syros Pharmaceuticals, Inc., each a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company. From 1982 to 2009, Dr. Sharp served as a director of Biogen Inc., which he co-founded in 1978. 

Dr. Sharp earned his B.A. from Union College (Kentucky) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He completed his postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology.