He is the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Biochemistry and of Cardiovascular Disease at Stanford University and works on the molecular basis of muscle contraction.
He later did his postdoctoral research at Stanford University with Charles Yanofsky and at MRC in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology with Hugh Huxley.
With Huxley, he started working on an actin/myosin/ATP model for molecular motors,[4][5] proposing that myosin would ratchet actin and exert a stroke.
In the late 1990s, he joined with Stanford physicist Steven Chu to create an interdisciplinary research program that combines engineering, physics, and biology — launching the Stanford University Bio-X Initiative and physically locates investigators from these distinct disciples together for extended periods.
[14] In 1998 Spudich co-founded Cytokinetics Inc. in San Francisco, along with Ron Vale and James Sabry from UCSF and Larry Goldstein from UCSD.