Sharon Long
Sharon Long is Professor of Biology at Stanford University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the California Institute of Technology, and carried out her Ph.D. studies at Yale University, studying plant development with Ian Sussex. As a postdoctoral fellow she trained with Fred Ausubel at Harvard, where she began her work on Rhizobium-legume symbiosis. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1982. She was appointed an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1994 to 2001, stepping out of that position to serve Stanford as Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences from 2001-2007. She returned to regular faculty research and teaching in autumn 2007. Her research group employs a spectrum of approaches, including microbial and plant molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics, to study the symbiosis of Rhizobium bacteria and plant hosts. They are especially interested in the signals and signal transduction pathways used by nitrogen-fixing bacteria and plants.
