Alexandra Leigh Joyner

Dr. Alexandra Leigh Joyner is the incumbent of the Courtney Steel Chair in Pediatric Cancer Research and a Member of the Developmental Biology Program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Joyner is a world leader in mouse genetics with a focus on neural development. She helped pioneer some of the techniques used today in laboratories around the world. A recent innovation was an adaptation of their method for tracing cell lineages and adult stem cells to perform mutant mosaic analysis in animals. Her long standing research interest if in the development and wiring of the cerebellum, and her in vivo studies have contributed to the foundation of knowledge used by the field to design experiments. Her research has recently branched out to include studies of the regenerative capacity of progenitors in the developing cerebellum, and understanding the cellular changes that underlie transformation of progenitors into tumor cells, specifically the sonic hedgehog (SHH) subgroup of the pediatric brain tumor meduloblastoma. Joyner has received several honors for her work, including election to the National Academy of Medicine in addition to her American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership.