Bonnie Bassler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Howard
Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Squibb Professor
of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Bassler received
a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California at
Davis, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins
University. She performed postdoctoral work in Genetics at
the Agouron Institute, and she joined the Princeton faculty
in 1994.
The research in her laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms
that bacteria use for intercellular communication. This process
is called quorum sensing. Dr. Bassler chairs Princeton University’s
Council on Science and Technology, she is the Director of
Graduate Studies in the Molecular Biology Department, and
she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses.
Dr. Bassler was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
in 2002. She was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology
in 2002 and made a fellow of American Association for the
Advancement of Science in 2004. She was given the 2003 Theobald
Smith Society Waksman Award and she is the 2006 recipient
of the American Society for Microbiology’s Eli Lilly Investigator
Award for fundamental contributions to microbiological research.
She was aslo elected to the National Academy of Sciences in
2006. In 2008, Bassler was given Princeton University’s President’s
Award for Distinguished Teaching. Bassler is an editor for
Molecular Microbiology and Annual Reviews of Genetics, and
she is an associate editor for Cell and Journal of Bacteriology.
Among other duties, she serves on grant, fellowship, and award
review panels for the National Institutes of Health, National
Science Foundation, American Society for Microbiology, American
Academy of Microbiology, Keck Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome
Trust, Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, and the Max Planck Society.
Bonnie Bassler speaking at the 2009 TED Conference
about her research:
Bonnie Bassler on Why American Kids are Behind in
Science:
About
Bonnie Bassler