Marlene Belfort

Dr. Marlene Belfort was born in Cape Town, South Africa to German-Jewish refugees escaping Hitler’s regime. One of the first women to study biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Cape Town, she earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Northwestern University. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, she holds the International RNA Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Belfort’s research interests are in splicing, mobility and evolution of self-splicing introns and inteins, and their application to biotechnology. She is an advocate for women and the underrepresented in science and a proponent of work-life integration. Dr. Belfort is a Distinguished Professor at the University at Albany SUNY, and Senior Advisor to The RNA Institute. She has three sons, three daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren, and lives with her husband, Georges, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.