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When Edith Lord unexpectedly became pregnant in immune responses that can control tumor development
the early 1980s, early on in her career as a scientist, and also studies the unique microenvironment present
she had to do a lot of soul searching. Balancing within growing tumors.
demanding work with single parenthood was not going
to be easy. Her administrative efforts standardized salaries and
benefits across the board for postdoctoral trainees,
“But of course I had no choice whether to continue,” created the staff scientist position as an alternative to
she says. “I was the only breadwinner.” becoming a research assistant professor, and addressed
issues—and advocated—on the behalf of trainees.
She adds: “I used to say only single mothers should
be working in the lab because you had to be really Once, wanting to see more diversity at the faculty
efficient. You had to get a lot of work done because you level, Lord nudged leadership to add more women to its
had to get to daycare.” search committees.

Lord came to the University of Rochester School of “It got me on some other committees,” she says.
Medicine and Dentistry as a faculty member in 1976, “Whether good or bad, if you’re going to complain
at a time when, as she remembers, there were two about things, you have to put some work in. That’s how
tenured women faculty out of hundreds. No female it goes, right?”
chairs, no female deans. Still, she always felt supported
by colleagues and others. Lord is the secretary-treasurer of the American Edith M. Lord, PhD
Association of Immunologists, which “does a very
And it was a step up from her time as a PhD student good job of promoting women in leadership positions,” Professor of Microbiology and
at the University of California, San Diego, where the she says. Immunology and Oncology
faculty was exclusively male. “I must say, however, I Former Leader of the graduate
program in the Department of
didn’t even notice at the time,” she says. “That was the That’s a focus not always afforded to females in other Microbiology and Immunology
way it was everywhere.” scientific circles, she acknowledges: “They’re not Former Senior Associate Dean
always the first people who come to mind, even though for Graduate Education and
Even now, when Lord often is the only female in they may be as well qualified or better qualified. Things Postdoctoral Affairs
the room, she tends not to perceive that fact. Her haven’t changed as much as I would’ve thought they University of Rochester School of
reasoning: “I think of myself as a scientist, not a would when I was starting graduate school, and it has Medicine and Dentistry
woman scientist.” been almost 50 years now.
Though recently stepping away as leader of graduate “Women have to speak up more, and hopefully they
and postdoctoral education, Lord maintains a lab and an will be listened to.”
NIH grant to continue her research. She focuses on the

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