Laura Bush, Editorial Director of Spectroscopy magazine virtually presented Markita Landry with the Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award during the 2020 SciX 2020 conference. Photo courtesy of SciX 2020 Virtual Conference.
By combining single-molecule biophysics and nanomaterial-polymer science, Markita Landry Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley has developed new tools for understanding biological systems. Using a combination of nanoparticles, imaging, and spectroscopy, her work has led to the discovery of aspects of neuromodulation in the brain and for the delivery of genetic materials into plants for crop biotechnology. She is the 2020 winner of the Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award, presented by Spectroscopy magazine.
Landry received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign in 2012 going on to a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT before taking her current position at Berkeley. She is also currently a faculty scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, an investigator at the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco, and an investigator with the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley. Landry’s research focuses on the intersection of single-molecule biophysics and nanomaterial-polymer science to develop new tools to probe and characterize biological systems. Her research has generated nanoparticle-polymer conjugates for imaging and spectroscopic detection of neuromodulation in the brain, and for the delivery of genetic materials into plants for crop biotechnology applications.
In recognition of her work, Professor Landry was virtually presented the 2020 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award at the SciX 2020 online conference in October, where she also gave a plenary lecture.
This interview by Spectroscopy magazine describes Markita's early and most recent research.