Developmental Biology

BIOGRAPHY

Judith Kimble is Henry Vilas Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Departments of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) (since 1994). She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley (1971) and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1978). She joined the faculty in Madison in 1983 as an assistant professor after spending four years as a postdoctoral fellow with John Sulston at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Dr. Kimble is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Sciences and American Philosophical Society. She has been President of the Genetics Society of America and the Society for Developmental Biology, and has served on numerous boards and committees both nationally and internationally. Most recently, she was elected to a three-year term on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences and has joined the National Academies Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy.

Dr. Kimble’s research focuses on the molecular regulation of animal development. Over the course of her career, she has analyzed controls of germline self-renewal and differentiation, including discovery of a stem cell niche in 1981, asymmetric cell divisions, sex determination and organ morphogenesis. Her experimental approach relies on the powerful genetics, simple anatomy and complete genome sequence of the nematode C. elegans. Her work has contributed to our understanding of Notch signaling, Wnt signaling, RNA-regulatory networks, and ADAMTS metalloproteases. She is the author of more than 150 scientific publications and is an inventor on two issued US patents. She has trained more than 30 postdoctoral fellows and 30 graduate students.