Dr. Cassandra Callmann

Biography

Cassandra Callmann is an Assistant Professor and CPRIT Scholar in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry from West Chester University in 2012, followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 2014 and 2018, respectively. Her graduate work was supported by fellowships from the Inamori Foundation, ARCS Foundation, and the Cancer Researchers Nanotechnology program at NIH. In 2018, she received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the UC San Diego Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Following her Ph.D., she was a postdoctoral fellow with the American Cancer Society at Northwestern University. As an early career researcher, she was selected as a 2019 CAS Future Leader by the Chemical Abstracts Service and the American Chemical Society. Her research focuses on carbohydrates, which constitute 80% of Earth's biomass and are essential for cell structure and the development of complex multicellular organisms. Her program aims to pioneer a new class of synthetic glycopolymers, or carbohydrate-polymer conjugates, to systematically study their impact on biological functions. Through her work, she aims to design novel carbohydrate-based biomaterials with applications in biology and medicine.

Research Interests