Dr. Emily Que

Biography

Emily Que graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004, where she performed undergraduate research in bioinorganic chemistry and materials chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Larry Que and Prof. Andreas Stein. Her research interests took her to the University of California at Berkeley for graduate studies, where she worked with Prof. Chris Chang. During her time in the Chang lab, she developed a series of Gd-based contrast agents for copper sensing applications and was awarded the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award in 2010. She later moved to Northwestern University, joining labs led by Prof. Tom O'Halloran in chemistry and Prof. Teresa Woodruff in reproductive biology. There, she developed new imaging tools and methods to explore mammalian egg utilization of zinc at the time of fertilization. This collaborative project involved close interactions between chemists, reproductive biologists, electron microscopists, and scientists at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The research in the Que lab lies at the interface of bioinorganic chemistry and chemical biology, with an emphasis on the synthesis of new molecular tools characterized in test tube biological settings, ranging from isolated proteins to cell cultures and whole organisms. Major areas of focus in the lab include the development of chemical tools to probe cellular metal homeostasis and the development of novel MRI contrast agents for molecular imaging.

Research Interests