About the PI

Hiten was born in London, England, where his parents were medical residents.  The family moved to Nairobi, Kenya (where his mother was born and raised) when he was only a few months old ,where his younger brother was born several years later.  Political violence caused the family to flee to the USA when Hiten was 5 years old.  He attended kindergarten and the first grade in Pittsburgh.  The family them moved to the Seattle area. He graduated from Bellevue High School, where he was on the varsity tennis team and the debate team.  Hiten received his B.S. and M.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford, where he started out interested in math and physics, migrated to organic chemistry, and eventually landed in biology.  There, he was introduced to bench science in the laboratory of Phillip Hanawalt, a pioneer in the DNA repair field.  Hooked on bench science by this experience, he continued his education at UCSF, where he was an MD-PhD student.  During his first two years of medical school, he worked in the lab of Harold Varmus, working on retroviral ribosomal frameshifting, which sparked an interest in RNA. Hiten performed his PhD work in the lab of Christine Guthrie (Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UCSF), focusing on the role of snRNA in splicing.  After finishing medical school,  Hiten decided to not pursue further medical training and instead to continue to do research. He did postdoctoral work as a Helen Hay Whitney fellow in the lab of Gerry Fink at Whitehead Institute/MIT, investigating mechanisms of MAP kinase signaling specificity.  He returned to UCSF as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, where he currently serves as Professor and Vice-Chair.  He published a book on cell type in 2008, entitled “From a to alpha” published by Cold Spring Harbor Press,  He was awarded the UCSF Outstanding Mentor Award in 2015 and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2020.  He serves on the MSTP (MD-PhD program) Council (admissions and advisory committee) and the Executive Committee for the Tetrad Graduate Program.  Hiten loves talking science with people in the lab and colleagues.  In his free time, Hiten likes to explore the restaurant scene San Francisco, cycling, hiking, and spending time his family.  You can find his CV here.