Torii researches stem cell maintenance and the cell-to-cell communication required to correctly pattern tissue during development, focusing on stomatal development as a model. Her work on cell-to-cell communication has also focused on the mechanisms that determine organ size and shape. In September 2019, Torii joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a professor of molecular biosciences and holds the Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology. She is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Principal Investigator and Visiting Professor at the World Premier Research Initiative, Institute of Transformative Biomolecules (WPI-ITbM), Nagoya University, Japan. Prior to joining the University of Texas at Austin, Torii was the Endowed Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Washington.
