Beth Alison Shapiro (born 1976[5]) is an American evolutionary molecular biologist. She is Associate Director for Conservation Genomics at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.[6][7] She was also a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, taking a leave of absence in March 2024 to become Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Colossal Biosciences.[7]
Beth Shapiro | |
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Born | Beth Alison Shapiro 1976 (age 47–48) Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Alma mater |
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Known for | How to Clone a Mammoth[4] |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
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Institutions | |
Thesis | Inferring evolutionary history and processes using ancient DNA (2003) |
Doctoral advisor | Alan J. Cooper[3] |
Website | pgl |
Shapiro's work has centered on the analysis of ancient DNA.[8][2] She was awarded a a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2006[1] and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009.[5][9]
Shapiro was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on January 14, 1976.[10][11] She grew up in Rome, Georgia, where she served as a local news presenter while attending Rome High School.[12]
She graduated from Rome High School with a GPA of 4.0, and entered the University of Georgia in 1994.[13] She studied Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English literature, and geology prior to choosing ecology as her major.[11] She graduated summa cum laude in 1999 with BA and MA degrees in ecology.[11][5] The same year, she was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship[12] followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford for research on inferring evolutionary history and processes using ancient DNA supervised by Alan J. Cooper.[3]
In 2004, Shapiro was appointed a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Oxford[14] and director of the Henry Wellcome Biomolecules Centre at Oxford, a position she held until 2007. In 2006, she was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.[1] While at the Biomolecules Centre, Shapiro carried out mitochondrial DNA analysis of the dodo.[15][16]
Shapiro's research on ecology has been published in leading journals[2] including Molecular Biology and Evolution,[17] PLOS Biology,[18] Science[15][19][20] and Nature.[21][22][23] In 2007, she was named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of 37 young American innovators under the age of 36.[24]
In 2024, Shapiro was appointed as Chief Science Officer of Colossal Biosciences to help the company meet its de-extinction and species preservation goals.[25]
Her peer reviewed publications in scientific journals[2] and books include: