External Advisory Board

Elaine Fuchs, PhD

Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
The Rockefeller University

Elaine Fuchs is the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor in Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at The Rockefeller University. She is also an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Fuchs has published more than 270 papers and is internationally known for her research in skin biology, its stem cells and associated human genetic disorders, which include skin cancers.

Fuchs' current research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that underlie how multi-potent stem cells of the skin are able to both self renew long-term and to maintain and regenerate the epidermis, sweat glands and hair follicles. She is interested in how stem cells respond to signals from their neighbors, adjust their program of gene expression and adopt specific fates. In addition to elucidating how these pathways are regulated in normal homeostasis, Fuchs' team also investigates the mobilization of stem cells in wound repair and the abnormalities in the process that lead to human skin cancers.

Fuchs received her PhD in biochemistry from Princeton University. After her postdoctoral research with Dr. Howard Green at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1980. She stayed there until 2002 when she relocated to The Rockefeller University. Fuchs' past awards and honors include the Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Novartis-Drew Award for Biomedical Research, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the FASEB Award for Scientific Excellence, the Beering Award, the National Medal of Science, the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award and Charlotte Friend Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. In 2011, she received the Madison Medal, the Passano Award and the Albany Prize, and in April, 2012 will receive the March of Dimes Prize. Fuchs is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the European Molecular Biology Organization (foreign member). She holds honorary doctorates from Mt. Sinai/New York University School of Medicine and from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Fuchs is also a past president of the American Society of Cell Biology, immediate past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and is on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. She has trained more than 100 post doctorate and 25 graduate students, many of whom are now at major universities around the world.