"The Evolution of the Germ Line and Pluripotency"

Biography

Ph. D. in Biology, Purdue University (USA)

Postdoc University of Texas, Austin

Assistant Professor, Florida State University

Professor, University of Nottingham

I graduated from Hunter College, City university of New York, in 1980 with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Biology. After skiing in the Rocky Mountains for a year, I returned to New York and worked for two years as a Research Technician with Rosemary Bachvarova, at Cornell University Medical, who studied Oogenesis in mice. I left there to study with L. Dennis Smith at Purdue University, where I earned my Ph. D. studying the Regulation of Meiosis during Oogenesis in Xenopus. I was a Postdoc in the Department of Zoology at the University of Texas, Austin, where I studied gene regulation during early Xenopus development with Paul Krieg, and I was appointed Assistant Professor in the department of Biology at Florida State University in 1994. It was at FSU that I recognized the potential of the axolotl embryo system that I began to develop. Unfortunately, no one else saw its potential, so I moved to the University of Nottingham in 2001, where I was appointed Reader in Genetics. I was later appointed Professor.