Professor & Chair of Dept. of Microbiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, she received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology in 1975 at the Univ. of Cambridge in the U.K. Dr. Blackburn is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is a recipient of its Award in Molecular Biology. She received the Australia Prize in 1998 and is a fellow of the Royal Society.