Dr. Helmut Zarbl has almost 35 years of research experience focused on understanding molecular mechanisms of toxicity, mutagenesis, carcinogenesis, toxicogenomics, as well as epigenetic and genetic mechanisms of disease susceptibility and chemoprevention. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from McGill University in 1983, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Mariano Barbacid at the National Cancer Institute (NIH). He subsequently did a postdoctoral research with Dr. Paul Jolicoeur at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal. He began his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 1987, where he rose to the rank of Associate Professor and became the Deputy Director of their Environmental Health Sciences Center.  In 1994, he joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) in Seattle, WA, where he established, designed, staffed and directed the FHCRC’s Genomics facility. He also served as the Director of Core Laboratories operated by the FHCRC Division of Public Health Sciences (PHS). He founded and served as the Director of the NIEHS Sponsored University of Washington/FHCRC Toxicogenomics Research Consortium, serving as the Director of the National Steering committee for two years.

In 2007 Dr. Zarbl joined the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers, where he assumed the Directorship of the NIEHS funded Center for Environmental Exposures and Disease. He also served as the Associate Director at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey from 2008-2013. He is currently Director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health.  He has served on national and international grant review panels, as well as scientific advisory boards to numerous university, non-profit and government agencies.

Dr. Zarbl is also the founding President of GeneAsses, Inc., a joint university and industry partnership whose mission is to translate research on differential susceptibility to environmental carcinogenesis into new diagnostic and prognostic tests, and therapies.