Giulia

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 computational studies of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. By using state-of-the-art computer simulations, her lab is interested in characterizing the mechanism of action and compuationally engineer 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.

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.

Giulia Palermo Curriculum VitaeDownload

Honors and Awards

  • 2024 – Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar
  • 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.