Gregg L. Semenza

Gregg Semenza is an American pediatrician and geneticist, born in New York City in 1956, who holds a professorship of genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and directs the vascular program at its Institute for Cell Engineering. After a medical degree and doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania and pediatric residency at Duke, he studied at Johns Hopkins how cells regulate the hormone erythropoietin when oxygen is scarce, and identified the hypoxia-inducible factor proteins, including HIF-1, which let cells and cancer cells adapt to low oxygen. He shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with William Kaelin and Peter Ratcliffe, and the 2016 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Several of his papers have since been retracted over image problems.