He is the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and adjunct professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Margolskee has been a pioneer in the application of molecular biology and transgenic animal models to the study of taste transduction and chemosensation.

and a Ph.D in molecular genetics from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with the late Nobel laureate Daniel Nathans.

[4] Subsequently, Margolskee has demonstrated that gustducin is critical to the transduction of compounds that humans consider bitter, sweet or umami.

In 2007, he published back-to-back papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy shedding light on how the gut "tastes" nutrients.