Matthew M. (Matt) Winkler grew up in Berkeley, California. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in genetics and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California at Berkeley. After postdocs at the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Lab and the University of California at Davis, he became an Assistant Professor of Zoology at The University of Texas at Austin in 1983. Five years later, he was promoted to Associate Professor and also founded a biotechnology company, Ambion, Inc. In 1991, Winkler left UT to devote his energies full-time to Ambion, retaining Adjunct Associate Professor status.

In 2006 he sold Ambion and took about 100 employees with him to start Asuragen, a molecular diagnostic company with the goal of developing diagnostics based on the then newly discovered class of small RNAs know as miRNAs. MiRNAs turned out to not be particularly good diagnostic analytes, so they pivoted and focused on developing diagnostics for cancer and genetic diseases. He sold Asuragen in 2021 to BioTechne. In 2008 Asuragen spun out a cancer therapeutics company based on miRNAs. They were able to take the company public, but eventually the company failed during clinical trials. The drug was a miRNA in a multilamellar lipid coat, very similar to the recently developed RNA based Covid vaccines. A major difference is there was almost 15 years of improvement in the development of the lipid coats for delivering RNAs.

Winkler is a member of the Advisory Council for the College of Natural Sciences and the UTeach Advisory Council for The University of Texas at Austin. He and his wife Peggy have three sons.