He has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles since the early 1970s and was director of the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics & Proteomics, as well as a member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA.

He went on to the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a D.Phil in 1965[16] for research supervised by Charles Coulson.

Eisenberg's current research focuses on the structural biology of amyloidogenic proteins, while his computational efforts largely center on the development of bioinformatic/proteomic methodologies for elucidation and analysis of protein interaction networks.

[17] He was the recipient of Harvey Prize (Human Health) 2008 in recognition of his contributions in unfolding the structure of amyloid fibrils.

This recently recognized protein state provides opportunities to understand cells in health and disease.