Ellen Rothenberg is the Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Her laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms responsible for developmental lineage choice as hematopoietic stem cells differentiate into T lymphocytes. This research examines how transcription factors and signaling events induce T-lineage gene expression in uncommitted precursors, force relinquishment of other developmental options, and interact with changing chromatin landscapes to ensure the kinetics and irreversibility of lineage commitment. Approaches include in vitro developmental biology, high-resolution single-cell characterization, retroviral perturbation, and genome-wide analyses. Additional interests encompass variations in this pathway predisposing to autoimmunity and evolutionary origins of T, B, and innate lymphocyte programs through comparative analysis of basal vertebrates.

Rothenberg earned an A.B. summa cum laude in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. She held a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1977-1979), followed by an Assistant Research Professorship at the Salk Institute (1979-1982). At Caltech, she served as Assistant Professor of Biology (1982-1988), Associate Professor (1988-1994), Professor (1994-), Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology (2007-2021), and Edward B. Lewis Professor (2021-). She was Vice Chair of the Faculty (2020-2022). Honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences (2021), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017), Distinguished Fellow of the American Association of Immunologists (2019), Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (2021-2027), and the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2016), along with multiple undergraduate teaching awards (1988-2014). Key publications comprise "How transcription factors drive choice of the T cell fate" (Nature Reviews Immunology, 2021), "Single-cell insights into the hematopoietic generation of T lymphocyte precursors in mouse and man" (Experimental Hematology, 2021), "Runx1 and Runx3 drive progenitor to T-lineage transcriptome conversion in mouse T-cell commitment via dynamic genomic site switching" (PNAS, 2021), "Programming for T-lymphocyte fates: modularity and mechanisms" (Genes & Development, 2019), and "Transcriptional control of early T and B cell developmental choices" (Annual Review of Immunology, 2014).

Professional Email: evroth@caltech.edu