Joan Broderick is Professor and Head of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Montana State University. She is a bio-inorganic chemist who studies how iron-sulfur clusters and S-adenosylmethionine (commonly known as SAM) are used by nature to initiate radical reactions essential to life. Other research interests include the biological assembly of complex metal clusters, and the trafficking, storage, and utilization of iron and sulfur in biology. Broderick earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Washington State University (1987), and a Ph.D. (1992) with Tom O’Halloran at Northwestern University. She carried out postdoctoral research at MIT with JoAnne Stubbe before starting her independent career at Amherst College in 1993, where she began her work on radical SAM enzymes with undergraduate research students. She joined the faculty at Michigan State University in 1998 before moving to Montana State University in 2005. She has received the American Chemical Society Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry, is a Fellow of the AAAS, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She was co-chair of the 2005 ICBIC in Ann Arbor, MI. Broderick is married to her partner in life and science, Will Broderick, with whom she has twin sons.