Dr. Jones was Dr. Frederick A. Schwertz Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences and head of the Biological Sciences Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She received a B.S. degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Washington. She was a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Jones was director of the HHMI Undergraduate Biological Science Education Program at Carnegie Mellon. In addition, she was editor-in-chief of Genetics and associate editor for Yeast and the Annual Review of Genetics; she served on the editorial board of Molecular Biology of the Cell. She was awarded the Robert Doherty Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching (at Carnegie Mellon) and the Julius Ashkin Award, Mellon College of Science, for Excellence in Teaching. She was an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology.

Dr. Jones passed away on June 11, 2008.

Elizabeth Jones’s research focused on using genetics to learn about cellular function. For her HHMI project, she developed a “cognitive tutor” in genetics, which is computer software that provides feedback to students as they work problems, and she created a Summer Research Institute to teach sophomores experimental skills and involve them in a research project.