Welcome to the Quiroz Lab!

The Quiroz Lab mines protein self-assembly across engineered and biological systems. Led by Felipe Garcia Quiroz, we are a diverse team of scientists and biomolecular engineers.

Members of the Quiroz Lab engineer self-assembling materials that are genetically-encoded and stimuli-responsive. Using these materials, together with genetic and protein engineering tools, we tackle exciting challenges in nanotechnology, biotechnology and medicine. We are also interested in dissecting the DNA and genomic parts that encode for such material systems and their emergent biophysical properties at the DNA/genome and protein levels. To learn new principles of self-assembly and stimuli-responsiveness, we take a bioinspired approach. We probe and manipulate self-assembly phenomena within cells and tissues. The resulting findings illuminate fundamental aspects of biology and serve as foundation to engineer advanced biomaterials.

We are part of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Check out our website for more details on our research directions, publications and funding.

NEWS

[May 2, 2023] Congratulations to Natalia Barrera Villamizar on her graduation! Check out this GT news feature on her path.

[April 3, 2023] Congratulations to Dakota Ellis, a 2022 GT-SURE member of our team, who was awarded the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

[March 27, 2023] Congratulations to Alexa Avecilla on receiving an NIH F31 award for her PhD research on epidermal liquid-liquid phase separation dynamics.

[March 9, 2023] Congratulations to Kelsey Kubelick on our News & Views paper in Nature Cancer.

[February 24, 2023] Congratulations to Alexa Avecilla on becoming a PhD candidate.

[February 2, 2023] Congratulations to Alexa Avecilla and Maria Camila Giraldo on being selected to give research talks at the Society for Biomaterials 2023 Annual Meeting in San Diego.

[October 12, 2022] Felipe receives the Emory 1% Award for a perfect score on a DP2 grant.

[October 10, 2022] Congratulations to Maria Camila Giraldo on being selected to join Georgia Tech’s TI:GER program.

[October 4, 2022] Felipe receives the prestigious 2022 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

[September 29, 2022] Quiroz and Hudalla will lead a session on Supramolecular Biomaterials at SFB 2023.

[September 27, 2022] Congratulations to Maria Camila Giraldo on receiving a travel award to the AIMBE Public Policy Institute in Washington, DC.

[September 12, 2022] Congratulations to Maria Camila Giraldo on passing her PhD qualifying exam.

[May 10, 2022] We welcome Mariell Pascual, who joined the lab as Research Specialist.

[May 5, 2022] Felipe recognized as part of Emory’s 2022 Educator Appreciation Day.

[May 1, 2022] Congratulations to Kevin Tao on being accepted to Einstein’s MD-PhD program.

[September 24, 2021] Congratulations to Kai Littlejohn for passing her BME qualifying exam.

[August 25, 2021] We welcome Kevin Tao, who recently joined the lab as Research Specialist.

[August 3, 2021] Coulter BME covered our recent publication in JID Innovations.

[July 6, 2021] New publication: toward cracking the skin barrier. Congratulations to Alexa as first author!

[July 2, 2021]  Felipe elected Chair of the BioInterfaces SIG at the Society for Biomaterials.

[April 12, 2021] Our research informs new avenues to engineer synthetic cells.

[March 23, 2021] Congratulations to Kai Littlejohn for being awarded an NSF GRFP fellowship!

[March 20, 2021] The Italy-based International Center for Theoretical Physics just uploaded a recent research talk from our group.

[March 3, 2021] Why join Coulter BME? Here from us, students and faculty at GT/Emory.

[October 7, 2020] We welcome Kai Littlejohn and Camila Giraldo as new PhD students.

[August 3, 2020] We welcome Alexa Avecilla, who just joined the lab as a PhD student.

[March 13, 2020] Our most recent work on liquid-liquid phase separation in skin was just published in Science!

ABOUT THE COVER ART

The art in our homepage was created by Markos Kay for the Quiroz Lab. This illustration depicts our efforts to engineer and dissect the self-assembly of genetically-encoded materials. In nature, these complex materials are often built from simple, repetitive and disordered building blocks. Here, intrinsically-disordered proteins, at the bottom, assemble over space and time to yield highly-ordered nanostructures on the surface.