Nancy Manley is director of the School of Life Sciences and the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor. She joins us from the University of Georgia, where she has served as the head of the Department of Genetics for the last five years and as Distinguished Research Professor for the last 20 years. She comes to ASU with extensive experience in academic unit administration, running interdisciplinary graduate programs and overseeing university-wide sponsored research. Having received her PhD in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989, Manley’s research interests are in the fields of developmental biology, molecular genetics and immunology. Her current work focuses on the evolution, fetal development, postnatal function and aging of the thymus, the primary organ responsible for the generation of T cells.