Sue Biggins grew up in rural Rhode Island in the Foster–Glocester school district that was notorious for being the first in the state to have school canceled for snowfall. She did her undergraduate work at Stanford University followed by a PhD at Princeton with Mark Rose. She then went on to do postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco under the guidance of Andrew Murray. She started her laboratory in the Division of Basic Sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 2000 where she recently became the Director. Her lab is interested in understanding how cells ensure accurate chromosome segregation during cell division. Her lab has studied many facets of chromosome segregation including centromere identity and specification, kinetochore assembly and function, and spindle assembly checkpoint signaling. Sue is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator as well as an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
