Dr. Cliff Brangwynne received his BS in Material Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University.  As a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Brangwynne combined his interests in soft-matter physics and cell biology to investigate the behavior of sub-cellular organelles in C. elegans embryos.  This led to Brangwynne’s discovery that intracellular phase separation is an important mechanism underlying the self-assembly of biological materials.

Brangwynne is now an Associate Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  His lab continues to investigate how the physical properties of intracellular materials influence their role in biological processes. Brangwynne was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2012 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018 for his ground-breaking research.

Learn more about Brangwynne’s research here.