Clifford Brangwynne

Clifford Brangwynne is a biophysical engineer enhancing our understanding of cellular compartmentalization and its critical role in biological development. It has long been asserted that processes that drive cellular development—such as protein synthesis, energy production, cell cycle control, and waste degradation—require compartmentalizing the components that perform them into membrane-bounded organelles. Brangwynne’s research focuses on the less well-understood membraneless organelles—loose assemblies of proteins and nucleic acids that are not enveloped by a lipid membrane. Clifford Brangwynne received a B.S. (2001) from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. (2007) from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems from 2007 to 2010, prior to joining the faculty of Princeton University in 2011, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.