John Coffin is an American

virologist Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, the ...

. Born in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, raised in Schenectady, New York, Coffin is a professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy p ...

in Boston. He is also the former director of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (formerly the Drug Resistance Program) of the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

(NCI) and serves as special advisor to the director of the Center for Cancer Research at NCI.National Cancer Institute Profile
/ref> He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(elected in 1999) and a recipient of American Cancer Society professorship. He has advised policy committees at the national level regarding retrovirus-related matters. Coffin was programme committee chair for the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in 2011. Coffin received his undergraduate degree from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

. He performed PhD research with the geneticist

Howard Temin Howard Martin Temin (December 10, 1934 – February 9, 1994) was an American geneticist and virologist. He discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Phys ...

at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. His postdoctoral advisor was

Charles Weissmann Charles Weissmann (born 14 October 1931) is a Hungarian-Swiss molecular biologist. Weissmann is particularly known for the first cloning and expression of interferon and his contributions to the unraveling of the molecular genetics of neurogenera ...

of the

University of Zürich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

. Coffin began his faculty appointment at Tufts in 1975. Coffin's

HIV/AIDS research HIV/AIDS research includes all medical research that attempts to prevent, treat, or cure HIV/AIDS, as well as fundamental research about the nature of HIV as an infectious agent and AIDS as the disease caused by HIV. Transmission A body of sc ...

reflects his interests in

molecular biology Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

, virus-host relationships,

pathogenesis In pathology, pathogenesis is the process by which a disease or disorder develops. It can include factors which contribute not only to the onset of the disease or disorder, but also to its progression and maintenance. The word comes . Descript ...

and viral evolution and population dynamics.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American virologists American cancer researchers Wesleyan University alumni Tufts University faculty HIV/AIDS researchers Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology {{US-biologist-stub