Jeffrey Kieft

Jeffrey (Jeff) Kieft earned a B.S. in Chemistry at West Point, then served as an Army officer in Germany. After leaving active duty, Jeff obtained his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. Ignacio Tinoco and conducted post-doctoral research at Yale University with Jennifer Doudna. After one year as the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellow in Global Stewardship in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In 2009, he was selected as an HHMI Early Career Scientist Awardee. He has served as the Vice Chair of his department, Chair of an NIH study section, and is currently a Director of the RNA Society.

In May 2023, Jeff became the Executive Director of the New York Structural Biology Center, one of the world’s premier centers for the development and practice of integrated structural biology. Jeff’s research focuses on understanding how RNA structure, RNA conformational changes, and complex intermolecular interactions combine to enable diverse RNA function. He is particularly interested in viral RNAs that form complex three-dimensional structures that interact with and manipulate the cellular machinery. His lab uses a variety of approaches, including structural biology,biochemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics, and virology.