John Wallingford

John Wallingford

Fellow: Awarded 2022
Field of Study: Biology

Competition: US & Canada

John Wallingford is Mr. & Mrs. Robert P. Doherty Regents Chair in Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. He was born in Houston, Texas, and studied at Wesleyan, the University of Texas, Berkeley, and Caltech before starting his independent research lab at UT Austin in 2003. His group studies the basic biology of embryonic development with a focus on cell biological processes that sculpt cells and tissues in the embryo and how these processes go wrong in human birth defects. He has served as the President of the Society for Developmental Biology and is currently an External Science Advisor to the NIH’s Gabriella Miller “Kids First” Pediatric Research Program. Over the past few years, Dr. Wallingford begin pondering the cultural impact of developmental biology, and especially how the science of embryos informs our attitudes about lethal birth defects and about the far broader spectrum of extraordinary human bodies.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Fellow

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