Iva Susan Greenwald is an American biologist who is Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Columbia University. She studies cell-cell interactions and cell fate specification in ''

C. elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (r ...

''. She is particularly interested in LIN-12/Notch proteins, which is the receptor of one of the major signalling systems that determines the fate of cells.

Early life and education

Greenwald joined MIT as a graduate student in 1977. She was trained in the classics of molecular biology and developmental genetics. That year, H. Robert Horvitz joined the faculty at MIT, and convinced her to investigate ''

''. She started working on genetics, functional redundancy cell-lineage mutants. She moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1983 where she worked alongside

Jonathan Hodgkin Jonathan Alan Hodgkin (born 1949) is a British biochemist, Professor of Genetics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Education Hodgkin was educated at the University of Oxford where he graduated in 1971 ...

, Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros, who encouraged her to try to clone LIN-12. It took her two years to develop a strategy to clone LIN-12 (Tc''1'' transposon tagging), and she identified that that genetic sequence contained

epidermal growth factor Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a protein that stimulates cell growth and differentiation by binding to its receptor, EGFR. Human EGF is 6-k Da and has 53 amino acid residues and three intramolecular disulfide bonds. EGF was originally descr ...

(EGF) motifs. These investigations were amongst the first to show that worm developmental genes could be cloned, and that aspects of these genes were homologous to human proteins.

Research and career

In 1986, Greenwald joined the faculty at Princeton University. She moved to Columbia University in 1993, and was made professor two years later. Greenwald dedicated her career to understanding the mechanisms that underpin the LIN-12/Notch signalling system. LIN-12/Notch proteins mediate cell-cell interactions. Amongst these processes, Greenwald studies the role of LIN-12/Notich in binary regulation, feedback mechanisms and signal transduction. She has identified new genes that are involved with the modulation of LIN-12/Notch in development and disease.

Awards and honors

* 1983 Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Postdoctoral Fellow * 1986 NIH Postdoctoral Fellow * 1987 Searle Scholar * 1988 DuPont Young Faculty Award * 1994

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

Investigator * 1998 Metropolitan Life Foundation Promising Investigator Award * 2005 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences * 2005 Elected to the

U.S. National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...

* 2012 Ellison Medical Research Foundation Senior Scholar Award

Selected publications

* * *

Personal life

Greenwald is married to Gary Struhl, with whom she has a daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenwald, Iva American women biologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Columbia University faculty 21st-century American women