Lara K. Mahal is an American chemist who is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is also a Professor of
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
at the
University of Alberta. She is notable both for her pioneering work establishing lectin microarrays as a new technology for
glycomics, her work on miRNA regulation of glycosylation and her graduate work with
Carolyn R. Bertozzi on unnatural
carbohydrate incorporation. Work in her laboratory focuses on understanding the role of carbohydrates in human health using systems- and chemical biology-based approaches
Academia
Mahal received her
B.A. in Chemistry at the
University of California, Santa Cruz in 1995. As an undergraduate, she worked on organic free radical chemistry in the laboratory of Professor Rebecca Braslau. In 1995, Professor Mahal joined the newly formed laboratory of Professor Bertozzi at the
University of California, Berkeley where she worked on the incorporation of unnatural functionalized sialic acid derivatives onto the surface of cells. For this landmark work, Professor Mahal was awarded and
American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Pre-doctoral Fellowship. After graduating in 2001, Professor Mahal did postdoctoral research on neuronal exocytosis in the laboratory of Professor Jim Rothman at
Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK or MSKCC) is a cancer treatment and research institution in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. MSKCC is one of 52 National Cancer Institute– ...
Cancer Research Center. During this time Professor Mahal was a Jane Coffins Child Cancer Research Fellow.
In 2003, Mahal joined the faculty of the
University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Tenured in 2009, she then joined the faculty of New York University as an Associate Professor of Chemistry in the Biomedical Chemistry Institute. She was promoted to Professor in 2016. In 2019, Mahal became the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics at the University of Alberta. Beyond the CERC, Mahal has received several major awards, including the
Beckman Young Investigators Award (2004),
an NSF Career Award (2007), the Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2008), the 2008
NIH Director's New Innovator Award
National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award is a research initiative first announced in 2007 designed to supports exceptionally creative, early-career investigators who propose innovative, high-impact projects. The focus is specif ...
and the Horace S. Isbell Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (2017).
References
External links
* http://www.glycocode.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahal, Lara
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
University of Texas at Austin faculty
University of California, Santa Cruz alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
New York University faculty