Vicki Chandler

Chandler married at age 17, and divorced at age 19 with two daughters.[1] While working as a secretary, she began attending Foothill College with the intention of studying marine biology. Two years later, she transferred to the University of California Berkeley, where she received a B.A. in biochemistry[1] and studied under Randy Schekman.[2] She completed a PhD in biochemistry at the University of California San Francisco in 1983[3] with Keith Yamamoto.[2] She then moved to Stanford University, where she did a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics in the lab of Virginia Walbot.[4][5]

Chandler was a member of the faculties of the University of Oregon and the University of Arizona. While at Oregon in 1988, she was named a Searle Scholar.[6] In 1997, she moved to the University of Arizona, where she was a Regent’s professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Associate Director of the Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology.[5] Before joining the Keck Graduate Institute in 2015,[7] she was the Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, beginning in 2009.[3][8] She was the Chief Academic Officer and Dean of Faculty at Keck Graduate Institute.

Chandler was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.[9] She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[10] She has also been awarded the Presidential Young Investigator Award, NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers, and NIH Director’s Pioneer Award.[3][2] She also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2014.

President Obama appointed Chandler to the National Science Board in 2014.[3] She served on the board of the Searle Scholars Program from 2010 to 2015.[6] Chandler was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2015.[11] She has served as president of the Genetics Society of America and of the American Society of Plant Biology.[4]