Professor Elizabeth Blackburn

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Elizabeth Blackburn became President of The Salk Institute on January 1, 2016. Dr. Blackburn is a pioneering molecular biologist. She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering the molecular nature of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving genetic information, and for co-discovering telomerase, an enzyme that maintains telomere ends. Both telomeres and telomerase are thought to play central roles in aging and diseases such as cancer, and her work helped launch entire new fields of research in these areas.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Blackburn has received nearly every major scientific award including the Lasker, Gruber, and Gairdner prizes. She is a member of numerous scientific societies including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of London. She has served as president of the American Association of Cancer Research and the American Society for Cell Biology, and on editorial boards of scientific journals including Cell and Science.