Erin O'Shea Ph.D

Erin O'Shea Ph.D General Information

Biography

Dr. Erin O'Shea serves as President at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She previously served as HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer. Ms. O'Shea is regarded as a leader in the fields of gene regulation, signal transduction, and systems biology. She is a biologist and former faculty member at Harvard University and the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on the way cells sense changes in their environment and respond appropriately, work that has implications for understanding cancer and other diseases. Recent studies by Ms. O'Shea and her colleagues have detailed circadian clock biology in blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) and how cells decode transcription factor dynamics to successfully activate target genes. She received a PhD in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in Biochemistry from Smith College.