Giulia Palermo
Giulia Palermo
Department of Bioengineering,
University of California, Riverside
Giulia Palermo is a computational biophysicist and Associate Professor at the University of California Riverside in the Department of Bioengineering and Chemistry. She is a native of Italy where she earned her Ph.D. in 2013 from the Italian Institute of Technology. During her doctoral studies, she was awarded an early career fellowship to join the group of Prof. Ursula Roethlisberger at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). In 2016 she became a post-doc at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) working with Prof. J. Andrew McCammon, thanks to a Swiss National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowship.
Her group is best known for pioneering computational studies of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. By using state-of-the-art computer simulations, her lab characterizes the mechanism of action and engineers emerging genome editing systems that are transforming life sciences. She is a recipient of the 2020 Corwin Hansch Award to Outstanding Scientists Under 40, a 2022 NSF CAREER Award, and a 2023 Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry. She also received the ACS Rising Star Award of the Women Chemists Committee (2022), and a Biophysical Society Theory and Computation Subgroup Early Career Award (2023).
Giulia is an active educator passionate about teaching. She is an advocate for women in science and her lab strives to create research opportunities to increase diversity in STEM.
Honors and Awards
2023 – The Rising Star Award of the Women Chemists Committee – American Chemical Society
2023 – Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry
2023 – Biophysical Society Theory and Computation Subgroup Early Career Award
2022 – DOE-NERSC Innovative Use of High-Performance Computing Award
2022 – ERC Starting Grant (declined)
2022 – Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award, UCR
2022 – NSF CAREER Award
2022 – ACS OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry
2021 – Featured in the 2021 J. Am. Chem. Soc. Early Career Investigators Issue
2021 – First place prize at the 2021 RNA Society Arts and Music competition
2020 – Corwin Hansch Award for Outstanding Scientist Under 40
2018 – Featured in the 2018 J. Am. Chem. Soc. Early Career Investigators Issue
2018 – Nominated for the “Future of Biophysics Burroughs Wellcome Fund Symposium”
2017 – HPCwire Best Use of High-Performance Computing in Life Sciences
2017 – First place prize at the Art and Science image contest to the 61st Biophysical Society meeting, New Orleans.
Selected Publications
2024: A. Saha, M. Ahsan,* P. R. Arantes,* M. Schmitz, C. Chanez, M. Jinek and G. Palermo.† An Alpha-helical Lid Guides the Target DNA toward Catalysis in CRISPR-Cas12a. 2024 Nat. Commun. 15, 1473.
2023: S. Sinha, A. M. Molina Vargas, P. R. Arantes,* A. Patel,* M R. O’Connell.† and G. Palermo.† Unveiling the RNA-mediated allosteric activation discloses functional hotspots in CRISPR-Cas13a. Nucleic Acids Res. 2023, gkad1127.
2022: Ł. Nierzwicki, K. W. East, J. Binz, R. V. Hsu, M. Ahsan, P. R. Arantes, E. Skeens, M. Pacesa, M. Jinek, G. P. Lisi† and G. Palermo.† Principles of Target DNA Cleavage and Role of Mg2+ in the Catalysis of CRISPR-Cas9. Nature Catal. 2022, 5, 912-922. PDF
2021: Ł. Nierzwicki, K. W. East, U. N. Morzan, P. R. Arantes, V. S. Batista, G. P. Lisi† and G. Palermo.† Enhanced Specificity Mutations Perturb Allosteric Signaling in CRISPR-Cas9. eLife 2021, 10: e73601.
2020: L. Casalino, Ł. Nierzwicki, M. Jinek and G. Palermo.† Catalytic Mechanism of Non-Target DNA Cleavage in CRISPR-Cas9 Revealed by Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics. ACS Catalysis, 2020, 22, 13596-13605.
2019: C. G. Ricci, J. S. Chen, Y. Miao, M. Jinek, J. A. Doudna, J. A. McCammon and G. Palermo.† Deciphering Off-target Effects in CRISPR-Cas9 through Accelerated Molecular Dynamics. ACS Cent. Sci. 2019, 5, 651-662.