Shirley M. Tilghman  Shirley Marie Tilghman, (; née Caldwell; born 17 September 1946) is a North American scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator. She is now a professor of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. In 2002, "Discover" magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science. Tilghman was the 19th president of Princeton University; she was the first woman to hold the position and the second female president in the Ivy League. Tilghman was also the first biologist to hold the Princeton presidency. She is the fifth "foreign-born" president of Princeton, and the second academic born in Canada to be elected to the position. A leader in the field of molecular biology, Tilghman was a member of the Princeton faculty for fifteen years before being named president. She has returned to the Princeton faculty as a professor of molecular biology. In that capacity, she has returned to the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics as a faculty member; while she is not currently engaged in research, Tilghman actively advises undergraduates in their independent research, including the senior thesis for seniors. Tilghman also continues to hold leadership positions in the global scientific community. She was the 2015 president of the American Society for Cell Biology. Tilghman was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a young child, her father encouraged her interest in math. She graduated from Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba and received her honours B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. She was a secondary school teacher in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in the Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) Program. Tilghman earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under Richard W. Hanson. Tilghman was Hanson's first graduate student. Her PhD Dissertation was entitled ""The Hormonal Regulation of Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase."" She married Joseph Tilghman in 1970. This marriage ended in 1983, leaving Shirley Tilghman with custody of their young daughter (Rebecca) and infant son (Alex). She attributes her successful balancing of a scientific career and caring for her family to organization and focus. Her goal was to not feel guilty while at work or at home, instead focusing on the task at hand. Tilghman's work in molecular genetics focused on the regulation of genes during development, particularly in the field of genomic imprinting.