Elizabeth Haswell

Elizabeth Haswell earned her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco in 2000, working on chromatin remodeling in yeast. She then switched to plant systems for her postdoctoral work as a Life Sciences Research Fellow at Caltech, where she fell in love with plant mechanobiology. In 2007, she joined the Biology faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is now a professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Simons Faculty Scholar. Her research group aims to identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which plants perceive force, with a particular focus on mechanosensitive ion channels and she teaches a course on Plant Biology and Genetic Engineering. Liz is a Senior Editor for The Plant Cell and a Deputy Editor at Science Advances. She serves on the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee and is an AAAS Council Delegate. She is an advocate for science communication and for an academic culture that values sustainability, diversity, and authenticity. Sheis also a co-host of The Taproot, a Plantae podcast.