Outstanding Faculty Award 2025: Maureen Hanson

Bio

Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor Maureen Hanson joined the Cornell Section of Genetics and Development (now part of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics) as associate professor in 1985. Previously she was the first female faculty member in the biology department at the University of Virginia.  She received her B.S. degree in botany, summa cum laude, at Duke University, her interest stimulated by a summer research experience at USDA-ARS Beltsville after freshman year and then another at UC-Davis. She earned her Ph.D. in the biology department at Harvard University on protein synthesis in Chlamydomonas chloroplasts.  She then completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in plant tissue culture and organelle biology in a different Harvard lab.

Among numerous administrative duties at Cornell, she has served as director of a McKnight Foundation training grant in Plant Reproductive Biology, an NSF/DOE/USDA Plant Science Center on Experimental Analysis of Important Plant Genes, and an NSF/DOE/USDA Interdisciplinary Training Group on Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Processes, all of which supported research training for undergraduate and graduate students. She also has served as sssociate director of the Biotechnology Program, faculty supervisor of the Cornell Imaging Facility, on strategic planning committees for the University and CALS, on numerous faculty and staff search committees, and many other advisory committees.

Hanson has performed a significant amount of government service including grant review committees for USDA, DOE, NSF, NIH and DOD, panel manager for USDA CRGO, member of the NIH Committee on Common Data Elements for ME/CFS (2017-2018),  and co-chair of the NIH ME/CFS Roadmap Working Group of Council (2022-24). Among editorial activities, she has served as associate editor for genetics (1983-1995), on the editorial board of Mitochondrion (1999-2023), and guest editor for Annual Reviews, PNAS and Plant Cell.  She was the co-founder of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology and editor-in-chief of its publication, PMB Reporter, from 1984-1987.

Among the courses she has taught are Concepts and Techniques in Plant Molecular Biology, Plant Organelle Biology, Plant Biotechnology, Laboratory in Plant Molecular Biology and Responsible Conduct of Research.

Her plant biology research has concerned the genes encoding cytoplasmic male sterility and fertility restoration in plants, probing the functions of rediscovered chloroplast tubules, the molecular mechanism of RNA editing in plant organelles and engineering of photosynthesis for improved carbon fixation. After discovering the paucity of molecular biology in the field, in 2009 she began an additional research program on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). Her initial research concerned the gut microbiome, metabolomics and mitochondrial genetics in ME/CFS, but now largely involves proteomics and immunology. In 2017 she became PI and director of the Center for Enervating Neuroimmune Disease, which is supported by an NIH U54 ME/CFS Center grant and by private donations.  Studies in the Hanson lab have led to over 200 publications.

Hanson has received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Faculty Service (2008) and for Scholarship and Creative Activities (2025). For her research contributions to plant biology, she was designated a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (1989), fellow of the American Society for Plant Biology (2017), received the Innovation Award of the International Society for Photosynthesis Research (2022), and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2021) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2021). In 2023 she received the Outstanding Research Scientist Award of the International Association for CFS/ME.