Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome.
Rubin also served as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2003–2020) and founding executive director of its Janelia Research Campus.
[10] Rubin's first faculty position was at Harvard Medical School, followed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington; in 1983 he accepted an appointment as the John D. MacArthur Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is currently the MacArthur Professor of Genetics emeritus, Genomics and Development, in Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, and a Senior Group Leader at the Janelia Research Campus.
He was one of the three scientific founders of Exelixis in 1994; the company's original business plan was to exploit genomic research in Drosophila and other model organism to discover biological targets that could be used in drug discovery.