Marianne Bronner is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering and the Director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology. She received her B.S. in Biophysics from Brown University and Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. She assumed her first faculty position at the University of California, Irvine, before moving to the California Institute of Technology in 1996. Her research focuses on the neural crest, an important stem cell population that generates the peripheral nervous system, craniofacial skeleton and important components of the cardiovascular system. In particular, her lab has been systematically studying the gene regulatory network responsible for neural crest formation and evolutionary origin in the vertebrate lineage. She has published over 350 papers and has trained more than 40 graduate students and post-docs, many of whom now have their own labs all over the world. Her honors include the Women in Cell Biology Senior Award from the American Society for Cell Biology (2012), Conklin Medal from Society for Developmental Biology (2013), Harrison Medal from the International Society of Developmental Biologists (2021) and several teaching awards. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2015. Her editorial responsibilities include being Senior Editor for eLife, Monitoring Editor for Journal of Cell Biology and PLoS Biology, and Chief Editor, Biology, for Natural Sciences. She was President of the Society for Developmental Biology in 2009, International Society for Differentiation in 2014, and is President-Elect of the International Society for Developmental Biologists. She has served on numerous boards (e.g., Sontag Foundation, Curci Foundation, NIDCR Board of Scientific Counselors, International Society for Stem Cell Research). Her favorite activities have been associated with the Gordon Research Conferences. She served as Chair of the Neural Development GRC in 1994 and Developmental Biology GRC in 2001.