Dr. Irish obtained her B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. in Cellular and Developmental Biology from Harvard University under the mentorship of William Gelbart. As a graduate student, she showed that the DPP/TGFbeta signaling pathway is necessary to specify dorsal-ventral polarity in the Drosophila embryo. As a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow with Michael Akam in the Department of Genetics, Cambridge University, she continued to investigate patterning processes in the Drosophila embryo, elucidating how maternal effect and homeotic genes act to establish anterior-posterior polarity. Dr. Irish then turned her attention to exploring patterning processes in the Arabidopsis flower, as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with Ian Sussex at Yale University. She joined the faculty at Yale in 1991 and, for a number of years, has focused on characterizing the genes and pathways regulating organogenesis and growth in the flower. She has also explored the extent to which these pathways are conserved across different flowering plant species. Dr. Irish served as chair of the MCDB department at Yale from 2016-2022. Dr. Irish is a past president of the Society for Developmental Biology and has served as editor for the journals Developmental Biology and Evolution & Development.
Research
Using molecular, genetic, genomic and modeling approaches, the Irish lab focuses on understanding how plants regulate developmental plasticity to elaborate particular organ types. These interests range from investigating how stem cell proliferation is controlled to how biomechanical forces impact the specification of organ and cell shape to how developmental networks have evolved in different taxa. The lab uses a variety of model systems to investigate these questions, including Arabidopsis, tomato and citrus. The lab is also engaged in efforts to genetically engineer citrus to have heightened tolerance to disease.
Honors and Awards
Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Fellowship, 1986
NSF Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship in Plant Biology, 1989
Junior Faculty Fellowship, Yale University, 1993
Visiting Professor, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon, France, 2011
President, Society for Developmental Biology, 2013
Daniel C. Eaton Professor of MCDB, Yale University, 2017
Elected Member, Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, 2019
Ivy+ Provost Leadership Fellow, 2022
Honorary Member, Society for Developmental Biology Academy, 2023
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2023