biology

Rebecca Heald

Rebecca Heald is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Rebecca Heald rather than just read about it. In short: Rebecca W. Heald is an American professor of cell and developmental biology.

Key takeaways

Rebecca Heald belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rebecca Heald to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rebecca Heald from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rebecca W. Heald is an American professor of cell and developmental biology. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In May 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She has published over 120 research articles in peer reviewed journals.

Education and academic appointments Heald grew up in Greenville, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Hamilton College in upstate New York. She said she was inspired by "Biochemistry Professor, Donna Brown. I barely had a clue about what I was doing, but discovered the joy of pipeting colorless liquids from tube to tube." She received her Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, where she worked in the laboratory of Frank McKeon. She was a postdoctoral researcher with Eric Karsenti at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997, and has held the Flora Lamson Hewlett Chair of Biochemistry since 2011. In addition to running her research group, from 2018-2021 she served as a regional associate dean for research administration and from 2021-2025 as co-chair of the department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Research Heald studies topics in cell biology and developmental biology, including size control in animals, and the regulation of cell division. She uses egg cytoplasmic extracts from the frog Xenopus laevis and the related, smaller frog Xenopus tropicalis to study the behavior and size scaling of the mitotic spindle. She has shown that the volume of the cytoplasm in which a spindle forms is a key factor in regulating the size of the spindle, addressing an important problem in cell biology, that of how cells sense and control the size of their organelles. She identified a biochemical modification of the nuclear transport receptor importin α as a sensor that scales intracellular structures to cell size.

Advocacy for collaborative structures in science Heald has written about the challenges of starting a lab as a new Assistant Professor, and the benefits of collaborating with her neighbors Matt Welch and Karsten Weis to create a nurturing scientific and educational environment.

Awards and honors • 1999: Pew Scholars Award in the Biomedical Sciences. • 2005: American Society for Cell Biology Women in Cell Biology Junior Award. • 2006: National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award. • 2010 and 2016: UC Berkeley Outstanding Postdoc Mentoring Award. • 2017: Fellow, American Society for Cell Biology. • 2018-19: Leon Henkin Citation for distinguished service enhancing equity, inclusion and diversity. • 2019: Member, National Academy of Sciences. • 2021: American Society for Cell Biology Keith R. Porter Lecture • 2022: Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences • 2022: American Society for Cell Biology Sandra K. Masur Senior Leadership Award • 2023: Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Academic service Heald has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cell Biology and Developmental Cell. She is currently an editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a co-author of textbooks Molecular Biology of the Cell and Essential Cell Biology.

References

External links Official website Faculty page

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rebecca Heald

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rebecca Heald claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rebecca Heald before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rebecca Heald ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rebecca Heald

In research: Rebecca Heald appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rebecca Heald in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rebecca Heald is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American women, American cell biologists, American developmental biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rebecca Heald outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Rebecca Heald in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rebecca Heald means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rebecca Heald out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rebecca Heald in simple terms?

Rebecca W. Heald is an American professor of cell and developmental biology.

Why does Rebecca Heald matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rebecca Heald?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rebecca Heald.