Rebecca Heald

Rebecca Heald

Professor, Molecular & Cell Biology

I have entered a career stage in which mentoring has become as important to me as research. By engaging in the Life Sciences Initiative to enhance faculty diversity and inclusion, and as Associate Dean of the BEST Region, I hope to improve the situation for new faculty and make the Berkeley campus more inclusive and supportive of all our constituents.

Rebecca Heald's laboratory is interested in cell division and biological size control. They use in vitro cell extract systems derived from amphibian eggs and embryos to study the apparatus responsible for chromosome segregation, called the spindle. They’d like to understand how the spindle forms and functions and how its size is modulated in different species and cell types.