Professor Craig Pikaard earned a B.S. degree in Horticulture from the Pennsylvania State University in 1980 and a PhD in Plant Physiology from Purdue University in 1985. From 1986-1990, he conducted postdoctoral research as an NIH National Research Service Award recipient at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Craig joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis in 1990 and rose to the rank of full professor in the Biology Department, serving for a time as the Director of the Plant Biology PhD Program and as Director of the Monsanto-Washington University Collaborative Program in Plant Biology. Professor Pikaard joined the faculty of Indiana University in 2009, with joint appointments in the Department of Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.

Professor Pikaard’s laboratory is known for its work on ribosomal RNA gene organization and expression, RNA polymerase I transcription, and RNA-mediated gene silencing. One current focus of the Pikaard laboratory is the epigenetic phenomenon known as nucleolar dominance, a phenomenon in which only one parental set of ribosomal RNA genes is expressed in a genetic hybrid. A second focus is on DNA-dependent RNA Polymerases IV and V, which are plant-specific enzymes involved in the small RNA-mediated methylation and silencing of genes. The Pikaard lab has played a leading role in the discovery and functional characterization of Polymerases IV and Pol V, combining genetics, genomics, molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry in their studies.

Professor Pikaard has co-organized numerous scientific conferences, serves regularly on NIH scientific review panels and serves on the editorial boards of BMC Molecular Biology and the International Journal of Cell Biology. He has authored more than 105 scientific papers, book chapters and review articles. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008.