Rebecca Heald Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Rebecca Heald; Flora Lamson Hewlett Endowed Chair in Biochemistry, professor, and head, division of cell and developmental biology, molecular and cell biology department, University of California, Berkeley has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences 2019.

Dr. Heald's interdisciplinary research takes advantage of egg cytoplasmic extracts prepared from the frog Xenopus laevis. With these extracts, mitotic spindle assembly and function as well as chromosome condensation are reconstituted in vitro. Her lab also uses the smaller, related frog, Xenopus tropicalis, to study mechanisms of spindle and organelle size control investigating interspecies scaling. Extracts prepared from fertilized eggs at different stages of embryogenesis are used to study this developmental scaling. Her lab seeks to provide new insight into the underlying principles of spindle assembly and biological size control. Her research aims to understand the molecular basis of variation contributing to genomic instability and evolution.

Click here to view Dr. Heald's faculty page at UC Berkeley.

Click here to view the Heald Lab webpage.

Click here to view the National Academy of Science announcement.

Click here to view the UC Berkeley press release.