Susan G. Ernst is professor emerita at Tufts University known for her work on cell development using sea urchins as a model system. She is an elected fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

Academic career

Ernst graduated with honors from

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

in 1968 with a B.S. in

Zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

. She received her Ph.D. in Zoology in 1975 from the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

. After completing post-doctoral fellowships first at Case Western Reserve and then the California Institute of Technology, Ernst became an Assistant Professor at Tufts University in 1979. From 1997 to 2005, Ernst held a number of deanships at Tufts serving, most notably, as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2005. Throughout this time she continued to teach undergraduate and graduate courses and pursue her research. In 2005, Ernst returned to teaching and research full-time.

Research

Her research is in

Developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

and primarily focuses on the role of the Endo16

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

embryogenesis An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sperm ...

. She uses the

sea urchin Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) of ...

as her model system for research. Her work includes investigations into RNA in sea urchins, and the proteins produced during the development of sea urchins. Ernst has mentored undergraduate students, including Michael Levin who worked with her on applying electrical fields to sea urchin embryos.

Selected publications

* * * *

Awards and honors

Ernst was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997.

References

21st-century American biologists Living people Louisiana State University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) {{Biologist-stub