Lila Solnica-Krezel

Lilianna (Lila) Solnica-Krezel, Ph.D., completed M.S. in molecular biology at the University of Warsaw in Poland. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, and as a postdoctoral fellow in Wolfgang Driever’s lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston she initiated and helped to coordinate the large-scale screen for mutations affecting zebrafish embryogenesis. 

In 1996, she established her laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and became University Professor in 2009. Since 2010, Lila has been Professor and Head of the Department of Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Lila’s lab investigates inductive and morphogenetic processes shaping vertebrate body plan during gastrulation using zebrafish and human embryonic stem cells. Her lab is also leveraging the experimental strength of zebrafish to model and understand human diseases such as scoliosis and in the NIH-supported Undiagnosed Diseases Network. She received the 2019 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Award from the European Zebrafish Society; 2021 Carl and Gerty Cori Award from Washington University in St. Louis; 2023 Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lila is a past president of the Society for Developmental Biology and of the International Zebrafish Society.