Russell DeBose-Boyd, Ph.D.
Biophysics and Molecular Genetics
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Russell DeBose-Boyd was born and raised in the small rural southeastern Oklahoma town of Boswell. Soon after high school graduation, he began undergraduate studies at Southeastern Oklahoma State University (Durant, OK) where he participated in the Minority Biomedical Research Support program. Dr. DeBose-Boyd obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry with minors in Mathematics and Biology in 1993. He subsequently joined the laboratory of Richard D. Cummings, Ph. D. in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (Oklahoma City, OK). Following defense of his Ph.D. thesis in 1998, Dr. DeBose-Boyd joined the laboratory of Joseph L. Goldstein, M.D. and Michael S. Brown, M.D. at UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX) as a fellow of the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research. After a successful postdoctoral fellowship in 2001, Dr. DeBose-Boyd joined the faculty of the Department of Molecular Genetics. He was named an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association in 2005 and a W.M. Keck Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research in 2006. Dr. DeBose-Boyd was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007 and in 2009 he was appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist. In 2013, Dr. DeBose-Boyd was promoted to Professor and was named the Beatrice and Miguel Elias Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science in 2016. He was elected into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2023.