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O’Shea is HHMI’s sixth president and the first woman to lead the Institute. Under her leadership, HHMI has expanded its strategic and financial commitments to open, inclusive science. She is responsible for spearheading new programs and initiatives to accelerate scientific discovery and influence academic science across key career stages. O’Shea previously served as vice president and chief scientific officer.

A leader in the fields of gene regulation, signal transduction, and systems biology, O’Shea heads a lab at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus. She has been an HHMI Investigator since 2000. Prior to joining HHMI leadership in 2013, O’Shea was the director of Harvard University’s Center for Systems Biology and served on the faculties of Harvard University and the University of California, San Francisco.

O’Shea is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology. She co-chairs the National Academies Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Scholarship. Washingtonian magazine has named her one of the “most powerful women in Washington.” O’Shea received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Smith College and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.