She joined the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory as a staff
biochemist in 1972 and subsequently became a Senior Scientist, Director of Cell & Molecular Biology, Director of the Life Sciences Division, and Distinguished Scientist. In 1996, she received the
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award and medal, the highest scientific honor bestowed by the
United States Department of Energy. A member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
Institute of Medicine, and the
American Philosophical Society, Bissell is a recipient of the
Guggenheim Fellowship, the Mellon Award from the
University of Pittsburgh, the Eli Lilly/Clowes Award of the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Medal of Honor from the
American Cancer Society. Bissell and her colleague, William Ole Peterson, have developed 3D culture in cancer research. They have shown non-tumorgenic (normal-like) mammary epithelial cells form monolayer spherical acini with hollow lumen and tumorgenic mammary epithelial cells form filled bowl irregular acini. She has published about 300 articles and book chapters. In June 2012 she presented at the
TED conference. On Cancer Day 2013, this talk was featured as the first talk in a series of ten talks about cancer presented by TED. Where she mainly focused on the idea that a cancer cell does not immediately form a tumor; instead, its growth and development are influenced by signals from the surrounding microenvironment. == Personal life ==