Cover Photo: Monika Raj featured during a presentation at the 2022 meeting of the American Peptide Society.
Monika Raj has been named a 2023 Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Kavli Fellows represent the brightest young scientists from industryin STEM, used to refer to the field of work that applies sci..., academia, and government. Since the inception of the Kavil Fellows in 1989, more than 300 of its alumni have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and eighteen have been awarded Nobel Prizes.
As a fellow, Dr. Raj participated in the Frontiers of Science symposium, which was held in Irvine, California from March 1-4, 2023. In addition to giving a formal talk, Dr. Raj was selected to give a short “flash talk” to the entire symposium that presented her science for an audience with wide-ranging expertise.
Dr. Raj’s talks addressed her work using interdisciplinary research that combines tools from organic chemistry and chemical biology to synthesize chemical probes and sensors for translational research. This work allows the Raj Lab to develop diagnostic tools and technology for disease detection and new therapeutic modalities for disease treatment. The lab also works to discover new drug targets and functions of the undruggable proteome.
Dr. Raj has received several awards including the NSF Career Award, the NIH MIRA award, the Sloan Award, and, more recently, a Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society. This recent article describes some of her lab’s work to develop early detection methods for cancer.
“Monika has built a world-class research program at Emory.”
Brian Dyer
Dr. Brian Dyer, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and chairfaculty member who serves as administrative lead of an acade... in the Department of Chemistry said, “Monika has built a world-class research program at Emory, targeting some of the most important problems in chemical biology by developing chemical probes to study the role of posttranslational modification in various diseases, as well as diagnostic tools for early detection of cancer. We are pleased that the National Academy of Sciences has recognized her as one of the brightest young scientists from academia by selecting her as a Kavli Fellow.”
At Emory, Monika has also been selected to give the Emory College of Arts and Sciences (ECAS) Distinguished Faculty Lecture for 2023. She will give a public lecture to the Emory community in late April.
Congratulations, Monika!