Margaret Lise Gardel is an American biophysicist. She is the Horace B. Horton Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago.

Education

After Gardel earned her bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, she was accepted into physics graduate programs at Harvard University. While completing her PhD, she became interested in the ways actin deforms in response to external mechanical stress. She was encouraged by

Clare Waterman Clare M. Waterman is a cell biologist who has worked on understanding the role of the cytoskeleton in cell migration. Waterman is a Distinguished Investigator, Chief of the Laboratory of Cell and Tissue Morphodynamics, and Director of the Cell and ...

and various cell biologists to leave her postdoc position and join a research team at Scripps Research Institute. She was later accepted as a Pappalardo Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to conduct independent research in the areas of biophysics.

Career

Gardel joined the Department of Physics faculty at the University of Chicago in 2007, after completing her post-doctoral work. Shortly after she began teaching, Gardel received a Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. The next year, Gardel was part of a research program examining "the sudden and dramatic transformations that occur in processes where small-scale structural rearrangements result in rapid and far-reaching outcomes." She was also awarded a Sloan research fellowships. By 2012, Gardel was the recipient of the 2012 Early Excellence Award from the

American Asthma Foundation The American Asthma Foundation (AAF) was a non-profit grant program that funds basic research focused on asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptom ...

. The following year, Gardel and

Jennifer Ross Ann Jennifer Evelyn Elizabeth Ross (; 16 March 1916 – 10 December 2003) was a British literary muse who for a time financed ''The London Magazine''. She was the only child of Sir Geoffrey Fry, 1st Baronet and his wife Alathea Gardner. She g ...

, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, received a four-year, $800,000 INSPIRE grant from the National Science Foundation to study the fundamental physical laws that govern the behavior of cellular materials. In 2018, Gardel was appointed the Horace B. Horton Professor in the Department of Physics and the College. During that academic year, Gardel was part of a research study that recreated cell division outside of a cell.

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardel, Margaret Living people Brown University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University of Chicago faculty American biophysicists Women biophysicists American women academics Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women Fellows of the American Physical Society