Dr. Stubbe received her BA in chemistry from University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and her PhD in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1971. She performed postdoctoral work at UCLA (1971-1972) and then joined the faculty at Williams College (1972-1977), with leave for additional postdoctoral work at Brandeis University (1975-1977). She joined the faculty at Yale University School of Medicine (1977-1980) and later moved to University of Wisconsin (1980-1987). In 1987 she joined the faculty at MIT, where since 1996 she has been the Novartis Professor of Chemistry and also Professor of Biology. Dr. Stubbe is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Among many honors, she won the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (1986), the ICI-Stuart Pharmaceutical Award for Excellence in Chemistry (1989), the ACS Cope Scholar Award (1993), the Richards Medal from the Northeastern Section of the ACS (1996), the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry (1997), the Cotton Medal (1997), the Repligen Award (2004), the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2008), the Protein Society Emil Kaiser Award (2008), the ACS Nakanishi Award (2009), the Prelog Medal (2009), the Welch Award (2010), and the Murray Goodman Memorial Prize (2010). In 2009 she was awarded the US National Medal of Science, the nation's top science honor.
Dr. Stubbe's National Medal of Science award citation notes “her groundbreaking experiments establishing the mechanisms of ribonucleotide reductases, polyester synthases, and natural product DNA cleavers — compelling demonstrations of the power of chemical investigations to solve problems in biology”. Her work has had profound impact on fields ranging from cancer drug development to synthesis of biodegradable plastics. One of her laboratory's major efforts is in unraveling the mechanism of ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), which play a key role in converting nucleotides to deoxynucleotides, thereby allowing DNA to be copied and repaired. Her studies in this area led to the design of a drug, gemcitabine (2',2'-difluoro-2'-deoxycytidine, marketed as Gemzar by Eli Lilly and Company), which is now used to treat pancreatic and other cancers.