22 Facts About Ruth Lehmann

Ruth Lehmann is the Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

Ruth Lehmann previously was affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine, where she was the Director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology, and the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology.

Ruth Lehmann's mother served as a teacher and loved both the arts and literature, while her father worked as an engineer.

Ruth Lehmann developed a particular interest in biology, which was in part fueled by a high school biology teacher who encouraged her to pursue the subject at a university.

Ruth Lehmann attended the University of Tubingen in Germany to pursue a major in biology.

Ruth Lehmann worked closely with both Campos-Ortega and Nusslein-Volhard and returned to Tubingen the following year to earn her Ph.

Ruth Lehmann then accepted a post-doctoral position at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Ruth Lehmann remained at MIT for 8 years, serving as a faculty member at both MIT and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, in addition to working as a geneticist and molecular biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1994, Ruth Lehmann was one of 16 women faculty in the School of Science at MIT who drafted and co-signed a letter to the then-Dean of Science Robert Birgeneau, which started a campaign to highlight and challenge gender discrimination at MIT.

Ruth Lehmann then moved to the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University in 1996 as the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology.

Ruth Lehmann has since become the director of the Skirball Institute and the Helen L and Martin S Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology, and has recently been named chair of the Cell Biology Department.

Ruth Lehmann has served as president of the Society of Developmental Biology, president of the Harvey Society, and council member of the American Society for Cell Biology.

Ruth Lehmann is on the council for the National Institute of Child Health and serves as editor for a number of scientific journals including Cell, Developmental Biology and the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology.

Ruth Lehmann was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Ruth Lehmann is the recipient of the 2021 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, awarded by the Vilcek Foundation.

Ruth Lehmann published her first paper in 1981 under her Fulbright Fellowship mentor Campos-Ortega, detailing her study of early neurogenesis in Drosophila and the effects of lethal mutations on neural and epidermal cell precursors.

Under Nusslein-Volhard, Ruth Lehmann began to study maternal genes like oskar, pumilio, and nanos, comparing the effects of maternal versus zygotic genes in germ cell formation, abdominal patterning, and cell signaling.

Ruth Lehmann continued to focus her research efforts on germ cell differentiation well into the early 2000s.

Ruth Lehmann played a substantial role in the discovery of germ cell migratory pathways, particularly those concerning migration into the ovaries and testis.

In 2005, Ruth Lehmann's laboratory published a paper relating the lipid phosphatases Wunen and Wunen 2 to germ cell migration and elimination, suggesting that germ cells are sorted into the gonads by a type of repellent mechanism.

Currently, Ruth Lehmann is studying piRNA production and the role it plays in preventing transposable element insertion and movement across the Drosophila genome.

Ruth Lehmann discovered that biogenesis of piRNAs and activation of the piRNA pathway is directly dependent on a number of proteins and epigenetic interactions.