Annual Biomedical Sciences Retreat Speakers
Biomedical Sciences Retreat 2024 Guest Speaker
“Impacts of Biomolecular Condensates on Biological Function and Disease”
Keynote: Julie Forman-Kay, PhD
Julie Forman-Kay, PhD, is a Senior Scientist in and Head of the Molecular Medicine Program at the Research Institute of The Hospital for Sick Children and a Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Toronto. She obtained her BSc in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1985) and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale (1990). She did postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and came to SickKids in 1992. The major focus of her work has been to provide insights into how intrinsically disordered proteins and protein regions impart biological function and to develop methodological tools to enable better understanding of disordered states. Her lab uses computational, biochemical, imaging, and biophysical tools, particularly NMR, to study dynamic and disordered proteins and their interactions. A significant interest is characterizing dynamic complexes of disordered proteins that are mediated by multivalent interactions, including large-scale dynamic complexes leading to biomolecular condensates, which regulate cellular organization and enzyme activity. The Forman-Kay group, together with multiple collaborators, works on systems of relevance to cancer, cystic fibrosis and neurobiology and is developing disordered protein bioinformatics and structural biology computational tools. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.