[1] He was dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2010 to 2014, and president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies from 1996 to 2001.
In 1977, Pollard was named professor and director of the department of cell biology and anatomy at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where his laboratory discovered and characterized several important cellular proteins.
Additionally, Pollard served as an adjunct professor of biology, of bioengineering, and of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego.
In 2010, President Richard Levin named Pollard dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Yale, where he served until 2014.
After retiring from Yale in 2021, Pollard was appointed Visiting Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley.
Katherine Snowden Pollard is director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology, a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and investigator at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.