Lucia B. Rothman-Denes

Lucia Rothman-Denes is the Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 1974. In 2014 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She is best known for pioneering a novel system to study how bacterial viruses take over the molecular processes of their hosts. Combining genetic, biochemical, biophysical and structural approaches, her work has yielded fundamental insights into viral-host interactions and identified new mechanisms of regulation of gene expression at the transcriptional level. Her laboratory also focuses on further elucidating these viral-host interactions and exploiting them to discover new targets for antibacterials. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. Rothman-Denes received the Licenciado (1964) in chemistry and the Ph.D. (1967) in biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She was elected a Fellow (Class II:1) of the American Academy in 2001, and has served as Chair of the Class II:1 membership panel.