 So it is my great honor and privilege to have joined this university just in time to bask in the glow of this wonderful honor being bestowed on our colleague, Randy Scheckman, and to have the opportunity this morning to introduce Berkeley's 22nd Nobel Prize winner. And as you all know, and you're all here because of this, there's no prize, of course, that calls attention more globally and indeed more spectacularly to the importance of pathbreaking research than the Nobel. And this is the first Nobel, even though it's the 22nd for UC Berkeley, but it's the first in the category of physiology or medicine which makes this moment even more exciting for us here. Berkeley, of course, is known for its excellence in many, many areas. We call it comprehensive excellence and we actually mean that. And today's Nobel Prize is another illustration of the importance of that and indeed of this institution, all research universities, but also as my two distinguished colleagues before me just said, in particular it calls attention to the importance of public research universities that do so much to support cutting-edge research for the public good. And it's absolutely critical to acknowledge that while people have recently been talking about the decline of public universities and the decline of public research universities, first of all, it ain't so. And secondly, it's absolutely critical that it never be so. Our biological sciences department in the College of Letters and Science along with all of our science departments and programs and areas are working on a wide range of challenging problems that will ultimately help do very concrete things for the public good, including, as in this case, find new kinds of cures for diseases and change lives for the better. And as you've just heard in the case of our Nobel Laureate this morning, for at least a dozen years, Randy Schekman's been working on a cure for neurodegenerative diseases about which all of us know for most of us have been directly touched by these diseases in one way or another. But Randy is a trailblazer in the field of biochemistry. He's best known for identifying genes that control different facets of the cell's transport system. And the Nobel assembly has recognized him, and I quote, for his exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo. Now, I thought you were in the Department of Biology, but that's, Randy will explain to me exactly what all that means when I have a moment to get him after all the laurels. But he's an investigator, as was mentioned, not only here, but he's been supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. And it's very important for us to recognize the importance of HHMI in the critical funding they made possible for the work of Professor Schekman over the last years to enable him to do the kind of basic research that makes these kinds of prizes, of course, possible. Now, Randy is no stranger to achievement. Just over 10 years ago in 2002, he shared the Lasker Award for Basic and Clinical Research. The Lasker is among the most respected prizes for science in the world, and is considered the American equivalent in some ways of the Nobel. 86 Lasker laureates have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize, including, I understand, 32 in the last two decades. That just went up from 31 to 32 this morning, of course. Now, Randy was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His family moved to Southern California. Some of you heard this before we began, that he went to high school in Whittier. And even during junior high, he was hooked on science fairs, and according to my notes, received not just medals, but cash prizes at regional and state competitions. So he decided to go for the cash prize that beat all cash prizes in the field of science fairs. He went on, of course, to study at UCLA, as you heard, where he worked on DNA replication, and then did his graduate work in molecular biology at Stanford under renowned biochemist Arthur Kornberg, and earned his PhD there in 1974. But it was during his postdoc at UC San Diego, the second of three UC campuses that have been blessed by his presence, where he began to focus on this easy to grow microbe that I even know about since its baker's yeast. In 1976, he was offered a post in biochemistry here at UC Berkeley, where he began to focus primarily at that point on yeast genetics, and he's never looked back. I recently had the opportunity, in fact, to have breakfast with you, and it was a grand breakfast. We talked a little bit about his own research about the tradition of excellence in the biological sciences at Berkeley, and he also told me about his real and huge commitment to public higher education, to the University of California, and told me about how important it was that he got his start at UCLA and has had his full career here at UC Berkeley. And this is not for once of offers from all sorts of institutions. This is both because we support great science and great research here, and because our scientists are deeply committed to the public mission. So we are indeed hugely honored to have Randy as part of UC Berkeley's esteemed faculty. And as you heard, there's something else that goes along with this prize. Some of us sometimes think that the Nobel is so important precisely because of this award I can now give. It's a very important award. I got a parking ticket over the weekend myself that I have to, I did, that I have to settle after this press conference. But on behalf, on behalf, no, no, out of the pride. I need a cash prize. So on behalf of the University of California, Berkeley, I not only recognize Professor Randy Scheckman for his grand accomplishment as a Nobel Laureate, but conferring you a lifetime parking permit. The greatest honor we can bestow, Randy Scheckman. Thank you, Chancellor Dirks, Steve and Richard. Well, I never imagined being here to deliver these remarks, but let me start by crediting the people who made this day possible. My wife, Nancy, is here. My kids, Joel and Lauren are not here. They're often living their own lives in Michigan and Oregon. But let me look back and credit the people who really made my career possible, starting with my high school biology teacher, Jack Hoskins, who wrote me this morning to say that I had now replaced Tiger Woods as the most eminent graduate of Western High School. To my undergraduate research advisor, Dan Ray at UCLA, my graduate mentor, Arthur Kornberg at Stanford, John Singer, my post-doctoral mentor at UC San Diego, and then my wonderful colleagues here at Cal, starting with the most revered of them all, Dan Koshland, who was chair of the biochemistry department when I was hired as an assistant professor in 1976. When I started here as an assistant professor, I had the idea of studying how protein molecules are shipped out of a cell by a process called secretion. I had experienced in Arthur Kornberg's lab at Stanford the beauty of a dissection of enzymes involved in complex cellular processes. Kornberg was perhaps the greatest biochemist of the second half of the 20th century, and he taught me how to take a complex process, in that case DNA replication, and tease it apart molecule by molecule using the tools of the enzymologist in protein dissection. I took that message to heart, though not quite in the way that he had anticipated. And when I started at Berkeley, I wanted to set the stage for such a dissection of another cellular process, the process of protein secretion, but instead of relying entirely on Kornberg's advice, I relied on the example of a pioneering yeast geneticist by the name of Lee Hartwell, who used genetics to take apart the cell division cycle control pathway. I learned from Hartwell that genetics was a powerful tool to understand at, I would say, a descriptive level how a pathway operates, and so I embarked in 1976 together with a spectacular first year graduate student, Peter Novick, in the isolation of mutations that block secretion in yeast. We started with the idea that the genes that are required for the movement of the proteins within a cell would be essential for the viability of the cell, and we used genetic techniques that match that goal. Now, I have to emphasize that we started with no practical application in mind. We were interested in basic cellular mechanisms, and though the work has evolved considerably since then, that remains the fundamental core of my interest and that of my colleagues, that is how cells work. Knowing from many other examples that through basic science, through the application of fundamental principles, that practical applications would ensue, and so it was gratifying, though not of my own, my own direct goal, that the biotech company Chiron and Ed Penhode, our local colleague, developed an interest in using yeast and using the information that we had gained to try to engineer the expression and production of biologically and medically useful proteins. They showed very quickly that one could take a yeast cell and introduce a gene from the hepatitis B virus, and the cell would produce virus-like particles employing the pathway of protein secretion that we had charted by genetics. That development, really dramatic development, led to the production of a vaccine that now represents the entire world's source of hepatitis B vaccine, expressed in baker's yeast. They then, with some advice from me, were able to harness the yeast system to express and secrete very large, commercially viable quantities of human insulin and now one third of the world's supply of human insulin is produced by secretion in yeast. These were anticipated, but nonetheless, inevitably, the direct product of the investment, not only of this institution, but of the federal government in basic science. When I started, though I had no experience in this, I was full of confidence, perhaps too much confidence. I wrote my first federal grant to the NIH and was rebuffed with a, what basically was a triage, telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about and I may know how to pipette E. Coli, but that I certainly didn't know anything about yeast. Fortunately, again, with a little bit of money that came from the department and a generous, though small grant to begin with from the National Science Foundation, Novik and I were able to embark on a several year project to isolate mutations that block secretion culminating in 1979 with a publication in a journal called The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper that was communicated by my then chair, Dan Koshland. Now, when I started at Berkeley in 1976, my first faculty meeting was one that Koshland led and it was on the occasion of the recent election of our colleague Clint Ballew to the National Academy of Sciences. Many of you know Dan Koshland will not be surprised by the remarks that he made on the occasion. First, there was a round of champagne to toast Ballew's achievement. And next, as Koshland raised his glass, he said, well, congratulations, Clint. Now you can publish that crap of yours in the PNAS. Many years later, I followed in Dan's footsteps to become the editor-in-chief of the PNAS. And we had a celebration in honor of my colleague, Michael Botchan, who had just recently been elected to the National Academy. And I offered a toast to Michael and I said, well, congratulations, Mike. Now you cannot publish your crap in The Proceedings. So I have had the enormous benefit of the investment by people in the state of California and the federal government in my science. I'm grateful particularly to California for what it did starting with Pat Brown Sr. with the tremendous growth in this system, the University of California. I came from a middle-class family. There was no prospect of my going to a private institution. It never even occurred to me. My parents, in fact, wanted me to go to Long Beach State because they didn't see how they could possibly afford to send me to the University of California. But at the time in 1966 when I started my freshman year, the fees amounted to $40 a term. Room and board was $400 a term and I could work a summer job and pay for the entire school year. My father was able to send five children to public universities and never had to spend any money. Unfortunately, as you know, this is no longer true. The tuition fees for even for in-state residents has escalated dramatically. My daughter went to Cal, studied economics, graduated seven years ago and the fees then were only $2,000 to $3,000. They have dramatically increased since then. It really is a shame that kids who come from a middle-class family now have the additional burden of having to worry about these funds. Nonetheless, many of us are here, will stay, will continue to invest in public education and I intend to use whatever glory comes to me to the benefit of this institution to spread the word about how important public higher education is in this country. Thank you.