Catherine Dulac


Catherine Dulac is a French-born American biologist. She is the Higgins Professor in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where she served as department chair from 2007 to 2013. She is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was born in 1963 in France. She came to the United States for her postdoctoral study in 1991. She is most notable for her research on the molecular biology of olfactory signaling in mammals, particularly including pheromones, and downstream brain circuits controlling sex-specific behaviors. She developed a novel screening strategy based on screening cDNA libraries from single neurons and a new method of cloning genes from single neurons. As a postdoc, Dulac discovered the first family of mammalian pheromone receptors when working in Nobel laureate Richard Axel's laboratory at Columbia University.

Biography

Dulac grew up in Montpellier, France, graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, Paris, and earned a Ph.D. in developmental biology from the University of Paris in 1991. She worked with Nicole Le Douarin on developmental biology, and carried out her postdoc studies with Richard Axel at Columbia University where she identified the first genes encoding mammalian pheromone receptors.
Dulac joined the faculty of Harvard Molecular and Cell Biology in 1996, She was promoted to associate professor in 2000 and full professor in 2001. She is currently an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and was the Chair of Harvard's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology until 2013. She teaches three graduate level course including Molecular Basis of Behavior, Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Senses and Their Disorders, and Molecular and Developmental Biology Neurobiology.

Publications

Notable papers

She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.