Of Italian immigrants. He graduated from the

Michael A. Marletta is an American biochemist. He was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Italian immigrants. He graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1973 with an A.B. degree in biology and chemistry, and from the University of California, San Francisco in 1978 with a Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, where he studied with George Kenyon. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Christopher T. Walsh at MIT from 1978-1980 and continued as a faculty member at MIT from 1980-1987 whereupon he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was John G. Searle Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the college of pharmacy and professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan. In 2001, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to assume roles as Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and served as the chair of the department of chemistry from 2005 until 2010. \nHe was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. From January 2012 to August 2014, Marletta was president and CEO of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, succeeding Richard Lerner.