Helen Blackwell is a native of Shaker Heights, Ohio (USA). She attended Oberlin College in Ohio for her undergraduate studies, pursued her graduate studies in organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D. with Bob Grubbs), and performed postdoctoral research in chemical biology at Harvard University (with Stuart Schreiber). She has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2002, where she is currently the Norman C. Craig Professor of Chemistry and a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor. Helen leads a research program at the interface of organic chemistry and bacteriology.
Helen and her team have received numerous awards for their research, including a Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar and STAR Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator Award, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and an American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.
Blackwell also serves as the Program Director for the 33- year strong NIH T32 Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program at UW–Madison.