Alexandra Leigh Joyner

Alexandra Leigh Joyner has been appointed a Member in the Developmental Biology Program in the Sloan-Kettering Institute. She has also been named the incumbent of the Courtney Steel Chair in Pediatric Cancer Research.

Dr. Joyner is a world leader in mouse molecular genetics and pioneered many of the techniques used today in laboratories around the world. Among her recent innovations has been the development of original and creative methods to trace the lineages of specific cells in developing animals. She has an ongoing interest in the development of the cerebellum and in understanding the development of meduloblastoma, one of the most common pediatric brain tumors. Her investigative expertise in gene manipulation in embryonic stem cells and her studies of neural development place her at the cutting edge of her fields of interest.

Dr. Joyner received her PhD in medical biophysics from the University of Toronto in 1983 and did postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco. She comes to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from New York University, where she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a professor in the Department of Cell Biology and the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience.

The Courtney Steel Chair in Pediatric Cancer Research was endowed in 1989 by The Robert Steel Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research in memory of Robert Steel's younger sister, who was killed in an automobile accident in 1986.