A native of The Netherlands, Dr. Robert Rene Henri Anholt has built a career as a distinguished researcher and teacher in the field of genetics. In 2018, Anholt was named Provost’s Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Biochemistry, Department of Genetics and Biochemistry, College of Science, Clemson University, and the director of Faculty Excellence for Clemson’s College of Science.
Anholt began his academic pursuits at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in 1973. He would go on to receive a Master of Science in biochemistry in 1975 from University College in London, and, in 1982, a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, San Diego.
He received an interim postdoctoral appointment from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland from 1982–1986.
Anholt was an assistant professor in Duke University Medical Center’s departments of Physiology and Neurobiology from 1986-88 and from 1988–93, respectively. From 1993 through 2018, Anholt held several positions at North Carolina State University, where he became the director of the W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology and the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences.
Anholt received the Martin Kamen award for most outstanding doctoral thesis in 1982 from the University of California, San Diego. In 2000, he received the Faculty Resource Development Award, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, N.C. State University and in 2016 he was honored with the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence at N.C. State University. From 2016–19, he was conferred an honorary professorate by China’s Beijing Forestry University. Anholt is a member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
