About Hiten

Hiten was born in London, England.  The family moved to Nairobi, Kenya when he was only a few months old.  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 chemistry, and eventually landed in biology.  There, he was introduced to bench science in the laboratory of Phillip Hanawalt, a pioneer of DNA repair.  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 the lab of Harold Varmus on retroviral ribosomal frameshifting, which sparked an interest in RNA. Hiten performed his PhD in the lab of Christine Guthrie (Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UCSF), focusing on the role of snRNAs in splicing..  After finishing medical school,  Hiten 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 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. He is less enthusiastic about writing grants. In his free time, Hiten likes to explore the restaurant scene San Francisco, cycling, hiking, and spending time his family.  You can find a (possibly updated) version of his CV here.