Dr. Iva Greenwald received her Ph.D. from MIT in 1982 and conducted postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 1983-1986. From 1986-1992 she was on the faculty of Princeton University, where she achieved the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 1991. She moved to the Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University in 1993, and was appointed to the rank of Professor in 1995. She also held a joint appointment in the Dept. of Genetics and Development at Columbia from 2009-2015. Since 2016, Dr. Greenwald has had a primary appointment in the Dept. of Biological Sciences on the Morningside Campus, where her lab is currently located, while retaining a secondary appointment in the Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Her honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, both in 2005, and she is currently a member of the Editorial Board and Publications Committee of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Editor-in-Chief of WormBook in GENETICS.

Dr. Greenwald elucidated fundamental properties of the LIN-12/Notch signaling system, including its role in binary regulation of diverse cell fates, the importance of feedback mechanisms in lateral specification, the sequence and potential function of LIN-12/Notch as a receptor, the novel mechanism of signal transduction and the essential role of gamma-secretase in signal transduction. She has also identified new genes that modulate LIN-12/Notch activity in development and disease, and discovered different modes of regulation and crosstalk of LIN-12/Notch with other signaling pathways.