James Hurley

James Hurley is the Kirsch Springer Chair in Biological Sciences and Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his PhD in biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco in 1990 under Robert Stroud, specializing in protein crystallography, followed by postdoctoral training from 1990 to 1992 at the University of Oregon under Brian Matthews. Before joining UC Berkeley as the Judy C. Webb Chair and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology, he worked as an investigator at the National Institutes of Health. His research centers on the interplay between proteins and membrane lipids that governs cell and organelle shape, signal transduction, and pathogen subversion, with a focus on basic mechanisms of autophagy, mitophagy and its role in Parkinson's disease, lysosome biogenesis, damage, and repair in cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and the hijacking of membrane traffic by HIV-1.

Hurley's laboratory employs advanced structural and biophysical methods, including x-ray crystallography, hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, cryo-electron microscopy, cryo-electron tomography, and in vitro reconstitution of membrane remodeling processes. He has garnered major accolades, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society, the 2014 Neurath Award from the Protein Society for contributions to basic science, the Bakar Fellowship supporting drug development for neuronal debris clearance, selection for the 2024 SPARK NS Parkinson's Disease Translational Research Program, and the 2025 MTI Innovator Award. Key publications include "Mechanisms of autophagy initiation" (Annual Review of Biochemistry, 2017), "ESCRTs are everywhere" (EMBO Journal, 2015), and studies on the structural basis of autophagic PI 3-kinase activation and ATG9A recruitment to the ULK1 complex. Hurley's work has attracted substantial funding, such as nearly $14 million in grants for Parkinson's disease research, influencing therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative disorders and viral infections.