Craig C. Mello is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on gene regulation and gene silencing mechanisms using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. In 1998, he and Andrew Z. Fire discovered RNA interference (RNAi), a process by which double-stranded RNA triggers the degradation of specific messenger RNA molecules, thereby silencing gene expression. For this discovery of a fundamental mechanism controlling genetic information, they were awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.