Zachary Lippman

Zachary B. Lippman is the Jacob Goldfield Professor of Genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he has been on the faculty since 2008 after earning his doctorate there in 2004. His research has shown how the genes controlling stem cell production and maturation guide flower and fruit production in tomato and related species, and by studying the interactions among genes, environments and molecular signals that govern plant development, he and his team have devised ways to fine-tune shoot branching patterns and flower production to improve crop yields. He received the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences in 2020 for this work in plant genetics and genome editing.