Jennifer Nemhauser is a Professor of Biology at the University of Washington. Throughout her career, Jennifer has been drawn to projects where novel quantitative approaches, new technology and multi-scale biological questions meet-up. As a graduate student, Jennifer got hooked on the big question of how cells figure out where they are during development. She discovered that a simple molecule called auxin plays a pivotal role in relaying this type of information in a highly context-dependent manner. Her postdoctoral work allowed Jennifer to use first-generation genomic tools to begin building an organismal, integrated view of plant hormone signaling and development. This adventure continues in her own lab, where she has teamed up with Eric Klavins (Professor, UW Electrical Engineering) to recreate auxin signaling in yeast—using synthetic biology paradigms to ground-truth the predictions generated by systems-level approaches. Alongside her research questions, Jennifer is investigating how social and institutional systems shape the way scientists frame, analyze and disseminate their findings.