Terri Grodzicker '63

Alumnae Achievement Awards 1985

Molecular Geneticist, Virologist

Terry Godzicker graduated from Wellesley in 1963 as a Durant Scholar with a B.A. in zoology. She went on to receive both her master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University, where she was named a president’s fellow in 1967-68. In 1969, she was named a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s department of microbiology and molecular genetics, where her research focused on the genetics of the lactose operon E. coli. In 1973, Dr. Grodzicker moved to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, a non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics.

Just six months after her arrival at Cold Spring Harbor, Dr. Grodzicker accepted a staff position at the laboratory. During her time as a bench scientist, she began organizing the annual DNA Tumor Virus Meeting as well as overseeing the institution’s molecular genetics courses. In 1986, she became the laboratory’s assistant director for academic affairs.

In addition to her administrative responsibilities, Dr. Grodzicker continues her groundbreaking research. Her recent achievements include the isolation of “nonsense mutants” in human adenoviruses, a class of viral mutants which terminate gene expression. This discovery promises to be extremely significant to the genetic characterization of the human virus.

Dr. Grodzicker has served as a consultant to the Human Cell Biology Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation and the National Cancer Institute Advisory Committee for Microbiology and the American Society for Virology. Dr. Grodzicker is the editor of the research journal Genes & Development and her articles have been widely published in many other scholarly publications.