I am getting an opportunity of a lifetime: I will start as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington in the second half of 2023. The Riley Research Group will explore questions about extracellular biology using mass spectrometry, glycoproteomics, and chemical biology. A major interest of ours will focus on glycocode regulation and dysregulation in cancer progression and metastasis.

We will be looking to bring staff scientists, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates to our team. If mass spectrometry, bioanalytical chemistry, glycoscience, and chemical biology sound like fun corners of the scientific universe for you to explore, please let me know how we can connect. You can reach me by leaving your information here.

The glycocode, or combinatorial patterns of glycosylation that relay biological information, functions in essential roles that govern human health and myriad diseases (e.g., cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases). However, we lack a fundamental understanding of the rules that define changes in glycosylation, which hinders insight in to how the glycocode contributes to biological function at a molecular level. Our perspectives on the glycocode remain deficient because the non-templated complexity of glycosylation creates analytical challenges that have severely limited our ability to study glycoconjugates. I aim to solve these challenges. I leverage my graduate training in mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics and my postdoctoral work in chemical glycobiology to develop innovative bioanalytical and chemical biology technologies to investigate essential principles of glycocode regulation and dysregulation. Specifically, I am interested in using cutting-edge technologies to understand how altered cell surface phenotypes (i.e., glycocalyx status) manifest in cancer progression and drive metastasis. Through a combination of MS-based multi-omics, bioinformatics, and chemical biology, my goal is to use a systems-level approach to glycobiology to further our understanding of human health and disease and advance therapeutic glycoscience.