Joan Brugge, PhD

Dr. Joan Brugge is currently the Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professor of Cell Biology at HMS and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard.  She joined the faculty of the Harvard Medical School as a professor in July 1997. A graduate of Northwestern University, she did her graduate work at the Baylor College of Medicine, completing her PhD in 1975. She then performed her postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado with Dr. Raymond Erikson. Dr. Brugge has held full professorships at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also named as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1992-1997 Dr. Brugge was a founder and scientific director of the biotechnology company ARIAD. She then joined the faculty in 1997 as Professor of Cell Biology, and became Chair of Cell Biology in 2004 and Co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard in 2014.

Dr. Brugge is investigating the mechanisms involved in breast and ovarian cancer initiation and progression and mechanisms involved in cancer therapy resistance. Her laboratory has utilized three dimensional cultures of normal cells and tumor cells to recapitulate the organization of cells in their natural context and provided important insights relating to the mechanisms whereby genes that are altered in breast cancer contribute to tumor formation and progression.

Dr. Brugge has received several awards recognizing her scientific accomplishments including American Cancer Society Research Professorship and Medal of Honor, and the Senior Career Recognition Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, and she has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.