Marianne Bronner-Fraser received her Sc.B. in Biophysics from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. She joined the faculty at University of California, Irvine, in 1980 and became a Full Professor in 1990 as well as co-director of the Developmental Biology Center. In 1996, she moved to the Division of Biology at Caltech where she is currently the Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology. From 2001 to 2003, she was Chair of the Faculty at Caltech. Dr. Bronner-Fraser's research centers on the early formation of the nervous system in vertebrate embryos. Her laboratory focuses on how neural crest cells and placodes arose both in a developmental and evolutionary context. The aim is to unravel the molecular and cellular signals by which neural crest and placode cells form and evolve using a combination of embryological, molecular and genomic approaches.