Invitation to Found a New Department

Getting back to the connection to Stanford, the reason I was asked or invited to be, to consider founding a new Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford was because I was asking the critical questions in developmental biology. Not that they cared about the organism. It wasn't a eukaryotic cell. It was not a multicellular organism. It was not something that had classic embryology. It was the questions that mattered. And then I said, ultimately, yes. And here I am at Stanford. We built a very exciting department.

Accepting Stanford’s Offer

We talked lots. Ultimately, Harley and I discussed this. Harley at that point was a physicist and department head at Bell Laboratories. And I said, you know Harley, they're really pushing. This is sort of the full court press. And Harley looked at me and he said, you know, we are going to California, he said, we're going to move to Stanford. I said, but Harley, you don't have a job, how are we going to do this? And he looked at me again and he said, Lucy, how often does someone get a job offer like this, to build a brand-new department at Stanford University School of Medicine? And importantly, how often does a woman get that kind of job offer? We're going.

Building the Department of Developmental Biology

Part of the attraction was giving me $12 million, not me personally, but $12 million to build the department. And within two years, we had hired a full faculty. Yeah. This was in 1989 and $12 million was a very big grant and it meant a lot and it meant I could get the very, very best developmental biologists across the world. It was quite shocking to the developmental biology community that they asked somebody working on a bacterial cell to build a department of developmental biology. But, as I said, what was important was not the organism, it was the question. I wasn't that young. I was, no, let me see, I was 49. But look, part of it was the science. The other part was I had already been chair of a department at Einstein. I had already been a chair of a department at Columbia and through it all, through all the administrative jobs, at least 75% of my time and my brain were in my lab. Never, never did I consider myself an administrator. This was something that had to be done so I could work. And I was very good at delegating and an easy administrator, which was not something that was terribly important to me. What was important was the lab. What was important was the ability to get everything around me working so that I and my colleagues could do our science. That's what motivated me.

Becoming Director of the Beckman Center

No, never occurred to me to think about it. And something interesting is that there is a tradition that is rare and that is when a head of an institute at Stanford is stepping down, either you have a search committee and you look worldwide, or the outgoing director says I want X to do it. And Stanford is wonderful that way, it's not hierarchical, odd things happen. And I remember one day Paul Berg walking into my lab and saying, Lucy, I think you should take over as director of the Beckman Center. And I said, okay. That was the whole story. Nothing else to say.

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.