Associate Professor, Chemistry
Megan Gessel specializes in biological mass spectrometry. She uses this technique to study molecular structure, biomolecular interactions, and biochemical pathways. As a doctoral candidate at U.C. Santa Barbara, she studied protein structure and aggregation related to Alzheimer’s disease using ion mobility mass spectrometry. Gessel received an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Service Research Award for postdoctoral training at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she used MALDI imaging mass spectrometry to study biochemical changes in kidney disease. She has published several articles and papers, including “MALDI imaging mass spectrometry: Spatial molecular analysis to enable a new age of discovery,” (2014) and “Familial Alzheimer’s Disease Mutations Differentially Alter Amyloid β- Protein Oligomerization (2012).
Research interests: Analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry instrumentation and applications in biology and environmental chemistry, non-covalent interactions and structure of non-covalent complexes.