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Cheryl Y. Hayashi is a biologist who specializes in the evolution and functional properties of spider silk. She is the Provost and Sr. Vice President for Science at the American Museum of Natural History, where she is a curator and professor in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. She also serves as the Leon Hess Director of Comparative Biology Research. She was a graduate of Yale University, a professor at University California Riverside, and a 2007 MacArthur Fellow.

Education

Hayashi graduated from Iolani High School in 1985 and was a member of the school's first co-educational class. She continued her studies at Yale University, gaining a Bachelor of Science in 1988, Master of Science in 1990, and a Master of Philosophy in 1993. She worked with Prof. Catherine Craig, including field work in Panama, becoming interested in spiders when she had the job of hand-feeding the professor's colony of tropical spiders.

She was awarded a PhD by Yale in 1996, with a dissertation on the systematics of spiders using ribosomal DNA.

Career

After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wyoming (1996-2001), Hayashi was a professor at UC Riverside from 2001 to the end of 2016.

Her UC Riverside laboratory's work characterized spiders in the spidroin gene family, including how silk is encoded and studying the basis of molecular diversity in spiders. A variety of techniques, including whole-gene cloning, genomics, biochemistry, and biomechanics, were used to study the evolution of spider silk. Hayashi worked with engineers and biomechanics to understand spider silk, and to develop biomaterials based on spider genetic information.

She became curator, professor, and Leon Hess Director of Comparative Biology Research at the American Museum of Natural History in January 2017, where she initially served as the Director of the Institute for Comparative Genomics. She was appointed Provost and Sr. VP for Science in 2021.

Hayashi was a speaker at the TED 2010 Conference.

Awards

She was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Program in 2007.

References

1. ^ "Staff Profiles: Cheryl Y. Hayashi". American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
2. ^ "Cheryl Hayashi". Biology UC Riverside. University of California Riverside. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
3. ^ "Cheryl Hayashi: Spider Silk Biologist". MacArthur Fellows. MacArthur Foundation. 28 January 2007. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
4. Meserole, Rachel (26 February 2009). "Alumnus Profile: Cheryl Hayashi SM '88: "From Science Hill to Spider Silk Studies"". Yale Scientific. Yale University. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
5. "Unraveling the wonders of spider silk". National Science Foundation Discoveries. National Science Foundation. 9 December 2008. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
6. Hayashi, Cheryl (1996). Molecular systematics of spiders: Evidence from ribosomal DNA (Thesis 9635417 ed.). Yale University. pp. 414 pages.
7. "TED2010: Speakers A-Z". conferences.ted.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
8. "Discovery: Roundup of TED2010, Session 2". ted.com. 11 February 2010.

External links

• "TED 2010 | Cheryl Hayashi: Smooth — and Strong — as Silk", Wired, Kim Zetter, February 10, 2010
• Cheryl Hayashi at TED

• Living people
• ʻIolani School alumni
• Yale University alumni
• University of California, Riverside faculty
• American academics of Japanese descent
• American scientists of Asian descent
• MacArthur Fellows
• American women biologists
• 21st-century American biologists
• 21st-century American women scientists