As a young graduate student, I was sent to Cold Spring Harbor to take both the phage course and the bacterial genetics course and that was a defining moment in my education.

[My instructors were] Bob Edgar, Charlie Epstein, and I don't remember the others. They were incredible courses. And, of course, everyone at Cold Spring Harbor was there and it was during the summer and the symposia were underway. And what better way for a young person to be exposed to the incredible excitement of this revolution in molecular biology, which was led by the phage group. And so, at the time, and this is where it becomes relevant to becoming a founder of a department of developmental biology, at the time, in the sixties, we had incredibly powerful genetics and we had biochemistry. So, either we looked in vivo and figured out how cells behaved and we made mutants and understood various phenomena, or we took the cells, blasted them open, purified the enzymes, and figured out how you made things. But what was missing, and what I wanted to do when I had my own lab, was do in vivo biochemistry. What is the cell doing? Not what happens in a test tube, not what you can figure out from exquisite genetics, which is essential, but actually look inside the cell and think of ways of asking questions about the three-dimensional architecture of a cell.

It was Tom August [who sent me to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory].

Lucy Shapiro (b. 1940, New York City) is a developmental biologist and Professor Emeritus of Developmental Biology at Stanford University where she has been a faculty member since 1989. She held the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Chair in Cancer Research and served as director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. Dr. Shapiro’s lab has focused on studying Caulobacter crescentus, one of the simplest organisms that divides asymmetrically into different cell types, to uncover fundamental principles of developmental biology.

Dr. Shapiro received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Fine Arts from Brooklyn College in 1962, and her Ph.D. In Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1966. In 1986, Shapiro moved to the Columbia University School of Medicine as the first female chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Two years later, in 1989, Shapiro moved to Stanford University and founded the Department of Developmental Biology.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Shapiro became involved in policy work. She was invited to the White House to speak to President Bill Clinton and his Cabinet about the potential threats to the public posed by the increase in antibiotic resistance, emerging infectious diseases, and the possibility of bioterrorism. She then went on to serve as a scientific advisor to the Clinton administration and advisor on bioterrorism to the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, and to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush administration.

In addition to her research, Dr. Shapiro co-founded the anti-infectives discovery company Anacor Pharmaceuticals to develop new types of antibiotics and antifungals. This has resulted in the production of two FDA approved drugs; Kerydin, a treatment for toenail fungus and Crisaborole, to treat atopic dermatitis. Anacor Pharmaceuticals was acquired by Pfizer in May 2016. She also co-founded Boragen, an agricultural innovation company that merged with AgriMetis to form 5Metis, Inc, where she serves on the board. She also serves on the board of directors at GlaxoSmithKline and Pacific BioSciences, Inc.

Dr. Shapiro has received numerous awards including the National Medal of Science awarded by President Barack Obama, the Linus Pauling Medal, Dickson Prize in Science, Canada Gairdner International Award, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Excellence in Science Award, the Selman Waksman Award, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award, the John Scott Award, and the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.