Bob was born in Brooklyn, New York; his father an osteopathic family physician, mother a psychologist and 2 younger brothers, and spent his childhood in Massapequa, Long Island, before moving to Boston to attend MIT. Bob majored in Biology (course 7) while at MIT, and minored in Chemistry and Psychology. As an undergrad, Bob was a UROP student mentored by W. Eugene Knox, III, at Harvard Medical School where Bob conducted a project on a viral epizootic disease of the inbred NEDH Kx rat strain. After graduating from MIT, Bob joined the Immunology Department at Boston Children's Hospital where he was mentored by Raif Geha, and co-authored his first paper on immunoglobulin idiotypes in humans. Subsequent to this, Bob attended the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and spent the next 20 years in clinical medicine divided between the Emergency Room and community health centers. Excited about the publication of the Human Genome project and dazzling advancements in bioengineering, Bob did not want to be left out of this Genomics revolution and attended the New England School of Law where he earned his JD cum laude with a concentration in patent law, biotechnology and Intellectual Property law. Bob then spent a couple of years as a Patent Agent working for Cardinal Intellectual Property as a medical device and biotechnology expert. Tiring of simply processing patents, Bob wanted to gets his hands wet and dirty and jumped at the opportunity of returning to MIT as a Research Scientist in the laboratory of Tony Sinskey and ChoKyun Rha in the Dept of Biology. Bob spent the next 10 years diving into neuroscience research on Alzheimer's disease and neurodegenerative disorders. Then Bob immersed himself in Immunology while earning an MMSc in Immunology from Harvard Medical School, where he did his master's thesis using bioinformatics to discover a unique chromosomal aberration t(8;14) involving the Sall4 transcription factor while analyzing 2,000 human samples of leukemia in the NCBI GenBank. Bob then began a doctoral program in Pharmacology at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston, with a keen interest in neuropharmacology and the Cannabinoid receptors in the brain and immune systems. Following a stint teaching biochemistry at Harvard, Bob then joined Ann Graybiel's lab at MIT, where he plans to obtain research data from mouse behavioral studies to utilize in his doctoral dissertation. Bob's hobbies include hiking, camping, and piloting single-engine airplanes.
Email: rweinber@mit.edu
Email: rweinber@mit.edu