Joy Bergelson


Joy Michele Bergelson is an American evolutionary biologist. She is currently the Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics at New York University. Bergelson was previously and James D. Watson Distinguished Service Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, where she chaired the department for ecology and evolution. Her research focuses on the evolution and ecology of plants.

Education and career

Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Metuchen, New Jersey, She graduated in 1980 from Metuchen High School, which inducted her into its hall of fame in 2017.
Bergelson graduated from Brown University with an ScB in Biology in 1984. She went on to further study with a Marshall Scholarship at the University of York, receiving an MPhil in Biology in 1986 and a PhD in zoology from the University of Washington in 1990. Bergelson worked as a demonstrator in Ecology at the University of Oxford, before joining the faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis in 1992. She left St. Louis for Chicago in 1994.
She served as the section chair for Biology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.

Research

Bergelson is known for her research on the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, its ecology and the evolution of plant-pathogen interactions. Her early research examined interactions between insects and trees, spatial patterns in trees and weeds, and the energetic cost to plants to resist insects. Subsequently, she examined genetic variation in Arabidopsis thaliana, the genetic basis for disease resistance in plants, and polymorphisms in Arabidopsis. Bergelson's research has also examined genetic adaptations in plants to recent climate change.

Selected publications

Honors and awards