Timothy Osborne, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Microbiology/Molecular Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and conducted postdoctoral research in the lab of Nobel Prize winners, Brown and Goldstein at the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical School. Dr. Osborne was most recently chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at University of California Irvine. He received UCI’s Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research, was elected to Who’s Who in American University Professors, was recognized as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and is a recipient of a Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award in Biomedical Science.

The Osborne laboratory's study into the regulation of cholesterol and fatty-acid metabolism and their interconnectedness has been expanded to determine how lipid metabolism is integrated into more global aspects of physiology and cell biology. A major focus of their work has been on the Sterol-Regulatory-Element-Binding Proteins (SREBPs) and over the last 15 years the lab has made and validated several molecular reagents and assay systems for studying SREBPs using in vitro, cell-culture-based and whole-animal model systems. More-recent studies combine animal knockout and genome-wide approaches that indicate SREBPs are at the intersection of nutrient sensing and many other cell-environment interactions including responses to organic and biological threats.