Mary Gehring

Mary Gehring is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Member of the Whitehead Institute. She holds the David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research at the Whitehead Institute and is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Her research focuses on plant epigenetics—how heritable information that influences cellular function but is not encoded in the DNA sequence itself modulates plant growth and development.

Dr. Gehring's research spans several key areas:

• Plant epigenetics and DNA methylation
• Genomic imprinting in plant seeds
• Endosperm development and function
• Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance
• Epigenetic regulation during plant reproduction
• Environmental influences on epigenetic states

Her work primarily utilizes Arabidopsis thaliana as a model system to study how methylation patterns affect gene expression, seed development, and evolutionary processes. The research from the Gehring Lab has important implications for understanding fundamental biological processes and for improving agricultural practices in the face of climate change, as plant seeds form the basis of all agriculture and are fundamental to human life and planetary health.

Dr. Gehring has received numerous prestigious awards including the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2001), HHMI Fellow (2006), Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences (2011), Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award (2013), Cell's 40 under 40 (2014), NSF CAREER Award (2014), and was named an HHMI Investigator in 2024.

She began her scientific career at Williams College, earned her doctorate from University of California Berkeley in 2005, and continued her studies as a postdoctoral researcher with Steven Henikoff at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She came to Whitehead Institute in 2010 and has held several distinguished positions including the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Professor by MIT in 2011, the Landon T. Clay Career Development Chair at Whitehead Institute in 2020, and the Inaugural David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research in 2023.