Dr. Maria Elena Zavala
Professor, Department of Biology
MARC U*STAR and RISE Program Director
HSI STEM Resource Hub Lead-PI
Dr. MariaElena Zavala was born in the former orange capital of California, La Verne. Graduating from Pomona College with a B.A. in Botany made her the first in her family to earn an undergraduate degree. She entered the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the first Chicana to have earned a Ph.D. in Botany at Cal and according to some, the first in the USA. She completed post-doctoral work at Indiana University where she developed a tissue culture system for the regeneration of a rubber producing plant and US Department of Agriculture in Albany, California where she reported the first in situ localization of a plant growth regulator and developed a model of cyropreservation for plant tissues. Having received the Ford Foundation Post Doctoral Fellowship, she worked in Yale University and was eventually awarded the Rosa Parks/Cesar Chavez Visiting Professor at Michigan State University. California State University, Northridge (CSUN), ultimately hired her away from Michigan State University, initiating and serving as the program director of several programs aimed at diversifying and broadening participation of science at CSUN as well as other programs to develop the research infrastructure at the University. Because of her long-term involvement and success in mentoring, she was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering in 2000. An inspiration to others, she was named one of the "Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the US in 2001" by Hispanic Magazine. Currently, she maintains an active research laboratory focusing on developmental regulation of plants.