Jane L. Peterson, who has been a long-time crusader for advancing women in science, was named president and chief executive officer of the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology. The nonprofit educational organization is headquartered in Silverthorne, Colorado. Keystone Symposia convenes more than 50 open, peer-reviewed conferences across a broad range of the life sciences each year. The organization was founded in 1972 and held its first conference that year on membrane research in Squaw Valley, California.
Dr. Peterson has had a 30-year career with the National Institutes of Health, most recently serving as senior adviser to the Office of the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. She also has been the lead project coordinator of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa project. At NIH, she was a member of the Women in Science Committee and served as chair of the Women in Cell Biology Committee of the American Society of Cell Biology.
Dr. Peterson is a native on Montana. She is a graduate of Western College, now part of Miami University in Ohio, and earned a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and the National Cancer Institute, she joined the staff at NIH in 1985.