Kirsten Bomblies

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Kirsten Bomblies

Kirsten Bomblies is an American biological researcher and the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She was born in 1973 in Germany and grew up in Castle Rock, Colorado. She received her Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry and biology from The University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her research plumbs the genetic, biophysical and other processes that may give rise to new species. She focuses primarily on species in the Arabidopsis genus. For her PhD with John Doebley at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, she studied extant domesticated Maize (called "Corn" colloquially in United States) with some study of Teosinte, its wild precursor. She examines how these plants as well as organisms in general develop to their extant form and function due to the influence of their component genes, proteins and other intrinsic and extrinsic forces. As a postdoc with Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, she began to study how individuals interact with other organisms and to examine selection forces within and across species boundaries, accessions, chronological gradients and other delineations. The work has an experimental component but the theoretical implications of the discoveries Bomblies and her colleagues made have received lots of attention. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008. She joined the faculty of Harvard University effective July 2009. In her spare time she does nature themed watercolors and other art. She is married to Levi Yant.

References

• Kirsten Bomblies at the MacArthur Foundation
• Incoming faculty Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
• German-American plant evolution biologist wins MacArthur Award, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, September 23, 2008

Further reading

• Research Article by Kirsten Bomblies and John F. Doebley
• Art by Kirsten Bomblies