Lydia Villa-Komaroff
| Lydia Villa-Komaroff | |
|---|---|
Lydia Villa-Komaroff in 2013
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| Born | August 7, 1947 |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Goucher College |
| Spouse(s) | Anthony L. Komaroff |
| Awards | 2013 Woman of Distinction by the American Association of University Women |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Molecular Biology |
| Institutions | MIT, Harvard University, Northwestern University |
| Doctoral advisor | Harvey Lodish, David Baltimore |
| Other academic advisors | Fotis Kafatos, Tom Maniatis, Walter Gilbert |
Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a molecular and cellular biologist who has been an academic laboratory scientist, a university administrator, and a business woman. She was the thirdMexican American woman in the United States to receive a doctorate degree in the sciences (1975) and is a co-founding member of The Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Her most notable discovery was in 1978 during her post-doctoral research, when she was part of a team that discovered how bacterial cells could be used to generate insulin.
Villa-Komaroff was born on August 7, 1947, and grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was the eldest of six children; her father, John, was a teacher and musician and her mother, Drucilla, was a social worker. By the age of nine, Villa-Komaroff knew that she wanted to be a scientist, influenced in part by her uncle, a chemist.
In 1965, she entered the University of Washington in Seattle as a chemistry major. When an advisor told her that "women do not belong in chemistry" she switched majors, settling on biology. In 1967, she transferred to Goucher College in Maryland, when her boyfriend moved to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to work at the National Institutes of Health. In 1970, she married her boyfriend, Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff, and the couple moved to Boston.
In 1970, Villa-Komaroff enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate work in molecular biology. Her PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Harvey Lodish and Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, focused on how proteins are produced from RNA in poliovirus. She dedicated her thesis to her colleagues David Rekosh and David Housman, who she says "taught me to walk," and her advisors who "taught me what it might be like to fly."
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