Dr. Melody Campbell, a structural biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, was named today a 2022 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew awards these prestigious grants to early-career investigators of outstanding promise who are exploring some of the most pressing questions in health and medicine.
Campbell studies how cells communicate and interact with their surroundings, focusing on proteins that infection-fighting immune cells use to move through the body, find pathogens and fight them. She is a world expert in a protein-imaging technique called cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, that helps her understand how proteins’ forms contribute to their functions. Such insights could help inform the development of drugs designed to correct protein mutations.
Campbell joins more than 1,000 scientists who have been named Pew Scholars since 1985, including several fellow Fred Hutch faculty members. The four-year, $300,000 award will give her more scientific flexibility, she said.
