David Julius

David J. Julius (born November 4, 1955) is an American physiologist. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and won the 2010 Shaw Prize in life science and medicine. A native of Brighton Beach, Julius earned his undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He attained his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley in 1984, under joint supervision of Jeremy Thorner and Randy Schekman.He completed his post-doctoral training with Richard Axel at Columbia University in 1989.
In 2000, Julius was awarded the inaugural Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize for his work on cloning the capsaicin receptor. In 2010, he won the Shaw Prize for his work identifying the ion channels involved in various aspects of nociception. In 2014 he was honored by Johnson & Johnson with the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for discovering the molecular basis for pain and thermosensation.