He came to Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in 1971. Prior to the creation of his position in the Division of Medical Sciences, he was active in the program in cell and developmental biology and then the program in neuroscience. For a year and a half he served as the Director of Graduate Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

For two decades, Dr. Fox has designed and led ethics curricula for graduate students. He has held several positions in the Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs, including president. He is active in the Graduate Research, Education, and Training (GREAT) Group of the Association of American Medical Colleges, chairing its task force on benchmarks of success in graduate programs. He is on the steering committee and immediate past chair of the GREAT Group.

Dr. Fox is especially interested in the balance between the needs and ambitions of graduate students and the needs of society for a sufficient pool of talented scientists skilled in research who can make future contributions to biomedical research, education, and policy in this increasingly technical world. He has served as co-director for the postdoctoral training of the Minority Fellowship Program in Neuroscience, a national program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, and is on the faculty of the summer program in neuroscience, ethics, and survival at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

Prior to his current administrative duties, he conducted research in biochemical genetics and developmental neurobiology, focusing on the control of cell division, the presence and role of androgen receptors in the brain, abnormalities in mammalian sexual development, and the mechanisms of sex steroid action in sexual differentiation of brain and behavior.