23 Facts About Pamela Silver

Pamela Ann Silver is an American biologist, bioengineer and professor.

Pamela Silver holds the Elliot T and Onie H Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Systems Biology.

Pamela Silver was the first director of the Harvard University Graduate Program in Systems Biology.

Pamela Silver serves as a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.

Pamela Silver grew up in Atherton, California, where she attended Laurel and Encinal Elementary Schools.

Pamela Silver attended Menlo Atherton High School and graduated from Castilleja School in Palo Alto.

Pamela Silver did her postdoctoral research with Mark Ptashne at Harvard University where she discovered one of the first nuclear localization sequences.

Pamela Silver continued to study the mechanism of nuclear localization in her own lab as an assistant professor at Princeton University.

Pamela Silver continued in the area of Cell Biology upon moving to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to hold the Claudia Adams Barr Investigatorship and to become Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber.

Pamela Silver was promoted in 1997 to Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber.

In 2004, Pamela Silver moved to the newly formed Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School as a Professor.

Pamela Silver observed the motion of the carbon fixing organelles in photosynthetic bacteria.

Pamela Silver has worked extensively on designing modified bacteria to act as sensors for exposure to a drug or inflammation in the mammalian gut.

Pamela Silver has served as the Director of an ARPA-E project on electrofuels.

Pamela Silver has engineered cyanobacteria to more efficiently cycle carbon into high-value commodities and has shown that these bacteria can form sustainable consortia.

Pamela Silver collaborated with Daniel Nocera at Harvard University to develop a device, called the "Bionic Leaf", that converts solar energy into fuel through a hybrid water-splitting catalyst system that leverages metabolically engineered bacteria.

Pamela Silver discovered previously unknown variations among ribosomes that led her to propose a unique specificity for the matching between ribosomes and the subsequent translation of mRNAs.

Pamela Silver's finding has several implications for our understanding of how gene regulation impacts disease development, such as cancer.

Pamela Silver sits on numerous advisory boards and has presented to members of the US Congress.

Pamela Silver was awarded the BBS Mentoring Award for Graduate Education at Harvard Medical School.

Pamela Silver is one of the founders of the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition and currently sits on the Board of iGEM.

Pamela Silver founded and was the first Director of the Harvard University Graduate Program in Systems Biology.

Pamela Silver was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.