Dr. David Rueda, assistant professor of Chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was recently awarded a $775,000 NSF CAREER award for the project titled, “RNA Folding Dynamics by Single Molecule Temperature Jump Kinetics.”

The project will study RNA molecules that play an essential role in numerous cellular processes such as protein translation and control of gene expression.  Dr. Rueda is interested in understanding how these biopolymers fold into functional structures.  He and his team will be developing new technology that combines single molecule detection with laser induced temperature jump kinetics.  Their experiments are expected to uncover important details of this fundamentally important process.

 Congratulations Dr. Rueda!