Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu is a structural biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she leads the Sanbonmatsu Laboratory established in 2001. She received her B.A. in Physics from Columbia University in 1992 and Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences from University of Colorado at Boulder in 1997. Her team uses computational and experimental approaches to understand the mechanism of a diverse array of epigenetic and non-coding RNA systems, including chromatin, ribosomes, riboswitches, and long non-coding RNAs. She has been a leading figure in structural studies of long non-coding RNAs in epigenetics and is currently studying the mechanism of epigenetic effects involving chromatin architecture. Most recently, her group set the record for the world’s largest published biomolecular simulation at one billion atoms, the first simulation of an entire gene. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 and an advocate for LGBTQ scientists. Her TED talk, “The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain”, has over 2.5 million views on TED.com.

Women, TED, Biologists, Biology Activists, Social Activism, LGBTQ, LGBT Awareness Month, LGBTQ Voices, STEM Education, Civil Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Gay Activism, Diversity,