Monica Justice

Justice was born in western Kansas and was raised on the family farm.[1] Growig up, she attended Quinter High School where she was inducted into the Quinter chapter of the National Honor Society as a junior.[2] Following high school, Justice enrolled a Fort Hays State University and began working as a medical technologist at St. Francis Hospital.[3] She worked as a technologist for six year before returning to school for her PhD in developmental genetics. During her doctoral studies, she helped to pioneer chemical mutagenesis approaches in mice.[1][4] Upon completing her PhD, Justice began a postdoctoral fellowship in the Mammalian Genetics Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute.[5]

Upon completing her fellowship, Justice was recruited by Allan Bradley to join the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) to continue her research in developing high-throughput methods for assigning functions to mammalian genes.[1] As a professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM, she became a co-principal investigator on a project to develop mouse models which would enable scientists to identify the function of protein-coding genes in the mammalian genome.[6] Through a grant, Justice co-identified a mutation in a gene involved in the synthesis of cholesterol which led to the development of new treatments for Rett syndrome.[7][8]

Justice eventually left BCM to become a Canada Research Chair in Mammalian Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto and Canadian Institutes of Health Research.[9] In this role, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[10]

Justice married Robert A. Justice in 1978.[3]