Proving himself to be pretty fly for a recognized academic, The Offspring singer Dexter Holland has announced that he’s about to receive his PhD in molecular biology from USC. Holland came out swinging—in a strictly academic sense—in the band’s newsletter this week, announcing that he’s just finished defending his thesis on microRNA interactions in HIV. (MicroRNAs are small molecules that bind to the RNA that encodes the proteins in our body; needless to say, it’s hard to keep them separated.)
Holland, who joins the rare ranks of well-known musicians with doctorates that includes Brian May (astrophysics) and Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin (zoology), seems rightly proud of his not-inconsiderable accomplishment, which we have to assume will be good for his self-esteem. Now that his thesis—which you can take a peek at here, and which looks pretty legit—is done, Holland can finally come out and play; he says he’s excited to get back to devoting his full attention to The Offspring, which has been touring semi-regularly and working on its 10th studio album for the last several years. (Meanwhile, we don’t know what Holland’s grad school GPA was, but we can only assume he got A-A-A-A-As.)