Nozomi Ando

• Year

  2025

• Program

  Schmidt Science Polymaths

• Institution

  Cornell University

• Field of Study

  Chemistry & Chemical Biology

• Location

  USA

Dr. Nozomi Ando is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, where her lab develops new structural biology methods to study how structural dynamics enable and regulate protein function. Dr. Ando received her Ph.D. in physics from Cornell, where she developed X-ray scattering methods to study protein folding under extreme conditions, forming the basis for the world’s only synchrotron beamlines dedicated to deep-sea biology. Dr. Ando moved into the field of chemistry for her postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was an NIH Pathway to Independence fellow studying metalloenzymes with relevance to human health and the environment. She began her independent career at Princeton Chemistry in 2014 before returning to Cornell in 2018. Her lab is known for tackling long-standing problems in enzymology and structural biology—such as solving the origins of diffuse X-ray scattering and showing how this faint signal reveals protein dynamics. Dr. Ando has diverse interests beyond her lab, such as classical singing and koji fermentation, and she is committed to training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists.