Steven R. Tannenbaum

Steven R. Tannenbaum was born and grew up in the Rockaways of Queens, New York City. He attended the Hebrew Institute of Long Island through 9th grade, then moved to Hewlett, Long Island where he graduated from Woodmere H.S. in 1954. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1954-1962, earning a B.S. in Food Technology in 1958 and a PhD. in Food Science in 1962. He was then appointed to Assistant Professor in 1964 in the Department of Food Science and Technology leading up to Full Professor in 1974. Throughout his career he was mentored by Samuel A. Goldblith up until his death in 2001. In 1973 Tannenbaum did a sabbatical at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he decided to switch his career into cancer research at the suggestion of Gerald Wogan.

He has held appointments at MIT including Director of the Division of Toxicology (1996-1998) which he cofounded along with Douglas Lauffenburger, of the Division, and then Department of Biological Engineering, the first new academic Department in the MIT School of Engineering in over a generation, and Co-Director from 1998 to July 2003. In 2003-2004 he was the Director of Research of the Cambridge University-MIT Institute.