Our People—Former ASCB President Liz Blackburn to Head Salk Institute

Elizabeth Blackburn. Photo by Susan Merrell.

Elizabeth Blackburn. Photo by Susan Merrell.

Elizabeth Blackburn, a winner of the Nobel Prize and former ASCB President, will become the next President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, on January 1. She will be the Salk’s first woman president, according to the San Diego Tribune.

Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 2009 with ASCB member Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for “the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.” She was ASCB President in 1998.

About the Author:


John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.