Joy Bergelson, Ph.D.

Joy Bergelson is the executive vice president of the Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division and the Silver Professor in the Department of Biology at New York University (NYU). She oversees a grant portfolio focusing on projects in ecology and evolutionary biology that advance the knowledge and predict the dynamics of natural systems by investigating topics such as biodiversity, plant biology, disease and biological resilience.

Bergelson’s research investigates the coevolutionary interactions between plants and their pathogens. Her group is best known for dispelling the long-held belief that arms-race dynamics (in which species develop escalating adaptations and counter-adaptations against each other) typify the evolution of plant resistance to pathogens in nature. In working to understand the selective forces shaping plant-associated microbes, her group pioneered the use of genetically manipulated plants to disentangle ecological interactions.

Through international collaborations, Bergelson’s lab was instrumental in developing genome-wide association mapping in Arabidopsis, a flowering plant in the mustard family. The plant’s mapped genome now serves as a critical resource for the research community, and Bergelson’s work ultimately led to the 1001 Genomes project that detailed whole-genome sequence variation in the plant.
Bergelson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, an M.Phil. from the University of York in England and a B.Sc. from Brown University. Before joining NYU, Bergelson was the James D. Watson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where she chaired the Department of Ecology and Evolution.

Bergelson serves on science advisory boards for TULIP INRAE in France, MiCROP in the Netherlands, the Blavatnik Foundation in New York City and CEPLAS in Germany. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Science, the American Society of Arts and Sciences and the American Society for the Advancement of Science. Her earlier awards include a Marshall Scholarship, a Packard Fellowship and a Presidential Faculty Fellow Award.