Carolyn Bertozzi

Carolyn Bertozzi is a chemist who has made important contributions to understanding how cells interact. For the past 18 years she has been on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and will be joining Stanford as professor of chemistry and, by courtesy, of chemical and systems biology starting April, 2015. Using her knowledge of cell biology, she has developed a method for tricking cells into expressing non-natural sugars on their surface, which can be subsequently modified chemically to suit experimental design. This chemical remodeling technique provides a valuable tool for investigating and developing treatments for disease processes such as infection, inflammation, and cancer proliferation. Bertozzi designed a method by which cells can be caused to display modified sugar structures, which can then be "remodeled" chemically under non-toxic experimental conditions. She then uses these modified cells to test the relationships between the carbohydrate structure and its physical and biological properties. Her technical innovations find application in her laboratory, where she investigates such important scientific questions as how proteins fold, how cells communicate, and how cancer might be controlled. Bertozzi is a professor in the departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a research scientist in the Material Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Bertozzi received an A.B. (1988) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. (1993) from the University of California, Berkeley.