Emily P. Balskus PhD, BA

Emily P. Balskus is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, where she first became interested in chemistry as a high school student. She graduated from Williams College in 2002 as valedictorian with the highest honors in chemistry. After spending a year at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar in the lab of Prof. Steven Ley, she pursued graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) at Harvard University, receiving her Ph.D. in 2008. Her graduate work with Prof. Eric Jacobsen focused on the development of asymmetric catalytic transformations and their application in the total synthesis of complex molecules. From 2008–to 2011 she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the lab of Prof. Christopher T. Walsh. Her research in the Walsh lab involved elucidating and characterizing biosynthetic pathways for the production of small molecule sunscreens by photosynthetic bacteria. She also received training in microbial ecology and environmental microbiology as a member of the Microbial Diversity Summer Course at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole during the summer of 2009.

Emily joined the CCB faculty in 2011 and is currently a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. She is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a Faculty Associate of the Microbial Sciences Initiative at Harvard, a member of the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center, and a member of the MIT Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. Her independent research has been recognized with multiple awards, including the 2011 Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research, the 2012 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and the 2013 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. She was selected as one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2014 and in 2016 was named an HHMI-Gates Faculty Scholar.