2020 Ceremony
PEARL MEISTER GREENGARD PRIZE
An International Award Recognizing Outstanding Women in Biomedical Research
2020 PRIZE RECIPIENT
Joanne Chory, Ph.D.
Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology
Executive Director,
Harnessing Plants Initiative
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Investigator,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Joanne Chory’s pioneering discoveries have transformed our understanding of plant growth and development. Through elegant molecular genetic studies of the small flowering mustard plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a favored research model, she determined how plants optimize their size and form for photosynthetic life in response to the changing light in their environments. At the Salk Institute, where she runs an integrated program spanning atoms to ecosystems, she and her colleagues determined one of the most complex signaling networks that control plant growth. As director of Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative, Dr. Chory is using this knowledge to combat climate change.
An alumna of Oberlin College, Dr. Chory received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, she joined the Salk faculty in 1988. Dr. Chory is the recipient of many honors, including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Gruber Genetics Prize.
SPECIAL GUEST PRESENTER
The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, awarded annually by The Rockefeller University, was established by the late Dr. Paul Greengard, who served as the University’s Vincent Astor Professor, and his wife, the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard. Dr. Greengard donated his monetary share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Rockefeller and, in partnership with generous supporters of the University, created this major international prize. The prize is name in memory of Dr. Greengard’s mother, who died giving birth to him.
