Lee Niswander awarded 2026 Edwin G. Conklin Medal
8/6/2026
Lee Niswander was named the 2026 recipient of the Edwin G. Conklin Medal. A distinguished professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, she joins a group of researchers recognized for their exceptional contributions to developmental biology and their dedication to training the next generation of scientists.
Named after Edwin G. Conklin, a pioneering developmental biologist and American embryologist, the medal recognizes both scientific impact and mentorship. Niswander is described by her peers and trainees as a generous mentor, thoughtful leader, and a disarmingly humble scientist. "Lee is fearless,” said Maria Barna, a former graduate student of Niswander who now runs her own lab at Stanford. “[She] has instilled that in me."
Niswander’s work has shaped scientists’ understanding of how the body plan arises in early embryos. Her seminal contributions range from work on FGF signaling in limb development to the role of cell cilia during early organ development, and, more recently, efforts to understand the mechanisms underlying human neural tube defects.
Niswander originally became interested in research as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she first stepped into a lab through a work-study program. "Once I started to do research, I was like, wow, this is really cool," she recalled.
That exposure led Niswander to graduate school at Case Western Reserve University, where she joined the developmental biology program. She remembered thinking, “I don't know anything about development…I'm going to do that,” before joining the lab of Terry Magnuson.
Her dissertation work used genetic deletions in mice to probe which regions of chromosome 7 are necessary for embryonic development. She spent time in Sweden learning a specialized technique that helped her complete the work. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if somebody else knows how to do it,” she said. “Go learn from an expert.”
After completing her PhD, Niswander joined the lab of Gail Martin at the University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral fellow. She began working on limb development, a topic no one else in the lab was pursuing at the time, and trained further at University College London with Cheryll Tickle, a leading expert in the field. “She sat with me every single day,” Niswander said.
During this work, she found expression of FGF4 in the apical ectodermal ridge (AER) is sufficient for limb outgrowth — a finding that reflected the technical curiosity and willingness to seek outside expertise that would come to define her approach to science.
On her first day as a principal investigator, Niswander walked into an empty lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “It’s just me… I can’t believe they let me do this,” she remembered thinking. This marked the beginning of her independent research career. Soon after, Niswander began a collaboration with Kathryn Anderson launching a large-scale forward genetic screen for developmental mutants in mice.
One major finding to emerge from the screen was in identifying ciliary proteins that help integrate Hedgehog signaling during organogenesis, which Barna described as, “dogma changing.” The findings reconceptualized cilia from passive “cellular antennas” into active signaling hubs that drive decisions about development. “The cilia is not just a boring antenna that's sticking out of the cell but is like a major signaling center also," Barna said.
Niswander later returned to the University of Colorado Boulder, where her work expanded from identifying genes linked to neural tube defects to probing the broader underlying mechanisms. "[Niswander] was looking for a way to plug in some of these basic discoveries into human health even more,” Barna said.
Neural tube defects remain a central focus of her current work, reflecting her broader approach to science: “I'd be bored to tears to study anything at one level. I want to see things in that bigger picture.”
Niswander continues to teach limb development as a way of sharing what she finds most compelling about developmental biology and modeling the mentorship style she values. “I still teach limb development because I think it's such an easy system for somebody to say, oh yeah, why are my fingers here and my shoulder there?” she said.
Although her research has since expanded beyond questions of limb development, her postdoctoral findings still stand out to her. Remove the AER and limb growth stalls; replace its signal with FGF and the limb continues to grow. “I still find it astounding,” she said, “that you can take off this whole strip of tissue – the apical ridge – and just put back in FGF, and the limb will continue to grow.
Across her independent career, Niswander has trained nearly fifty graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have gone on to careers in science and beyond: professors, scientists, journalists, and editors. “I have no preconceived notions that somebody’s going to be like me,” Niswander said. “I give people opportunities all the time to pursue the career path that they want."
For Niswander, what has made it all worthwhile comes without hesitation. "The people are my legacy,” she said. "None of this would be fun if you didn't have people in your lab. I live vicariously through all the wonderful people that have come through my lab."
Barna saw that approach firsthand. “She encouraged this kind of bold and free way of doing science in the lab that I try to emulate,” Barna said. “But it's very difficult to emulate Lee."
What started at a single lab bench as an undergraduate has become a career that has moved across institutions and continents, produced work spanning human disease and developmental biology, and trained dozens of scientists. Yet, Niswander still described the impact of her work in the same way.
“The research is fun,” she said. “You publish papers and stuff, but to me it’s the people and what they’ve done.”
Last Updated 08/06/2026
