2008 Eighth Annual Beckman Scholars Symposium
Friday Guest Speaker

Lucy Shapiro, Ph.D.
D.K. Ludwig Professor
Department of Developmental Biology
Director, Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine,
Stanford University School of Medicine

The Cell Cycle: Spatial and Temporal Control of a Multicomponent Genetic Network
Professor Shapiro has cultivated a single organism into a powerful experimental system for understanding the control of the bacterial cell cycle and the establishment of cell fate. Her research has yielded fundamental insights and has created valuable paradigms for understanding the bacterial cell as an integrated system in which transcriptional circuitry is interwoven with the three-dimensional deployment of key regulatory and morphological proteins. In pioneering work, Shapiro initiated the ‘cell biology’ of prokaryotes, resulting in the first demonstration that proteins, such as chemoreceptors and signaling proteins, are dynamically localized in the cell, adding a spatial dimension to complex regulatory networks.

Lucy Shapiro holds the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Chair in the Department of Developmental Biology and is the Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She joined the faculty in the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1989 and served as the founding Chairman of the Department of Developmental Biology from 1987-1997. Prior to coming to Stanford, Professor Shapiro was the Higgins Professor and Chair of Microbiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. She founded the anti-infectives discovery company, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, in 2001 and is currently a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline, PLC. Professor Shapiro has been the recipient of multiple honors, including: the FASEB Excellence in Science Award, and election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and was awarded the 2005 Selman A. Waksman Prize from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.