Lucy Shapiro has won the 2012 Horwitz Prize.

LUCY SHAPIRO is one of three recipients of the 2012 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, awarded by Columbia University. Shapiro, a professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, and her colleagues Richard Losick of Harvard and Joe Lutkenhaus of the University of Kansas Medical School, were recognized for their work on the three-dimensional organization of bacteria cells. Established in 1967, the Horwitz Prize is Columbia University’s top honor for achievement in biological and biochemistry research.

“It is a great honor to receive the Louisa Gross Horwitz Award,” said Shapiro, who is the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Chair in Cancer Research in the Department of Developmental biology and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. “The work recognized by this award is the culmination of the shared intellectual input and vision of a large group of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the passion and joy of scientific discovery.

“Particularly important has been the establishment and flowering of an interdisciplinary lab at Stanford in collaboration with Harley McAdams, a physicist who is a professor in the Department of Developmental Biology where we run an integrated lab with physicists and engineers working side by side with molecular geneticists and cell biologists,” she said.

McAdams and Shapiro’s relationship goes beyond the lab; they also are married!

Read more about Shapiro’s work and about the Horwitz Prize.