Belfort, Marlene: - Dr. Marlene Belfort was born in South Africa to German-Jewish refugees escaping Hitler's regime. One of the first women to study graduate biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Cape Town, she earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Northwestern University. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she holds the International RNA Society's Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Belfort is a Distinguished Professor at University at Albany, SUNY. She and her husband, Georges, live in Massachusetts.