Elizabeth Helen Blackburn

Biography

She earned her B.Sc. (1970) and M.Sc. (1972) degrees from the University of Melbourne, and her Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Cambridge in England. She did her postdoctoral work in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Yale University from 1975 to 1977. In 1978, joined the faculty at the University of California Berkeley (UCB), in the Department of Molecular Biology. In 1990, she joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF, where she served as Department Chair from 1993 to 1999. She is currently a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute. She has won many prestigious awards throughout her career. She was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991) and the Royal Society of London (1992). She was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1993) and Member of the Institute of Medicine (2000). She served on the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2004, and has been awarded honorary degrees by 11 Universities. She received the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award for Basic Medical Research in 2006, and in 2007 was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. In 2008 she was the North American Laureate for L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science. In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 

Research Interest

Telomerase and Telomere Biology