Professor Elaine Fuchs,
The Rockefeller University

www.rockefeller.edu/our-scientists/heads-of-laboratories/1166-elaine-fuchs/

Elaine Fuchs is a renowned for her research in skin biology, its stem cells and associated genetic disorders, particularly cancers. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Princeton. After postdoctoral research at MIT, she joined the faculty at University of Chicago. In 2002, she relocated to Rockefeller University, where she is the Rebecca C. Lancefield professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development. Fuchs has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1988.

Her awards and honors include the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Medal of Science from the President of the United States, the L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for women in science, the Albany Prize in Medicine, the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology, the Pasarow Award in Cancer, the Pezcoller Award in International Cancer Research, the EB Wilson Award in Cell Biology, and in 2017, the Vanderbilt Prize for science and for mentoring women scientists, and the McEwen Award for Innovation in Stem Cell Research.

Fuchs is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Philosophical Society and European Molecular Biology Organization (foreign member). She holds honorary doctorates from NYU School of Medicine, University of Illinois, Albany Medical College and Harvard University. She is past-President of American Society for Cell Biology, The International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Harvey Society. She serves on the NYAS Board of Governors and NAM Council.  She’s trained 30 graduate students and 100 postdocs, most now at academic universities and medical schools.  Her latest work focuses on cancer (tumor-initiating) stem cells of squamous cell carcinomas, one of the most common and life-threatening cancers for which therapeutics are limited. Her science dissects how tumor stem cells form, survive and respond to ever-changing and stressful microenvironments.