Jo Handelsman

Jo Emily Handelsman (born March 19, 1959) is the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also a Vilas Research Professor and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Handelsman was appointed by President Barack Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she served for three years until January 2017. She has been editor-in-chief of the academic journal DNA and Cell Biology and author of books on scientific education, most notably Scientific Teaching.

Education Handelsman was born on March 19, 1959, in New York City. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in agronomy from Cornell University in 1979 and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984.

Career Handelsman secured a faculty position in plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985. She remained at Wisconsin until 2009, and then took a position at the Yale University Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology in 2010. Her research involves the study of microorganisms present in soil and insect gut. and is particularly known for her work in pioneering the use of functional metagenomics to study antibiotic resistance. She has published books and held workshops on scientific teaching, for which she is recognized nationally. She was co-director of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute and was the first president of the Rosalind Franklin Society. In 2008, she received the Alice C. Evans Award.

In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Award for Science Mentoring, which recognizes mentors in science or engineering. In 2015, she gave the third annual Patrusky Lecture. She is also the co-author of six books on the topic of teaching and education.

In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.