Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Mary L Kraft

Mary L Kraft
Mary L Kraft
  • Chien Family Professorial Scholar
  • Professor
(217) 333-2228
208 Roger Adams Laboratory

Develops and implements bioimaging, single cell analysis, and multivariate statistics techniques to address challenges in tissue engineering, viral infection and cell biology.

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Biography

Mary L. Kraft is Professor and Robert W. Schaefer Scholar in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She also is an affiliate professor in the Department of Chemistry. Her research group is developing new bioimaging approaches for individual cells to understand and predict biological function. They use these techniques for applied research, such as detecting stem cell differentiation for tissue engineering, and for basic research on the roles of plasma membrane organization in influenza virus replication and other important biological processes. Professor Kraft joined the department in 2007 after working as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She received her BS degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003.

Education

  • Postdoctorate, Stanford University, 2003-2007
  • Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003
  • B.S., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998

Research Interests

  • Transport, phase-separation and self-assembly in biological membranes

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Selected Articles in Journals

  • C. R. Anderton, P. K. Weber, K. Lou, I. D. Hutcheon, M. L. Kraft, "Correlated AFM and NanoSIMS imaging to probe cholesterol-induced changes in phase behavior and non-ideal mixing in ternary lipid membranes," Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Biomembranes, 1808, 307-315 (2011).
  • B. Vaezian, C. R. Anderton, M. L. Kraft, "Discriminating and Imaging Different Phosphatidylcholine Species within Phase-separated Model Membranes by Principal Component Analysis of TOF-Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Images," Analytical Chemistry, 82, 10006-10014 (2010).
  • S. G. Boxer, M. L. Kraft, and P. K. Weber, "Advances in secondary ion mass spectrometry applied to biological samples," Annual Review of Biophysics, 38 53-74 (2009).
  • J. S. Moore, and M. L. Kraft, "Synchronized self-assembly," Science, 320, 620-621 (2008).
  • M. L. Kraft, P. K. Weber, M. L. Longo, I. D. Hutcheon, and S. G. Boxer, "Phase separation of lipid membranes analyzed with high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry , " Science, 313, 1948-1951 (2006). (Perspectives Article in Science 2006, 313, 1901-1902; News of the Week in Chemical and Engineering News 2006, 84, 11; Research Highlights in Nature Nanotechnology 2006, doi:10.1038/nnano.2006.105.)
  • C. Galli Marxer, M. L. Kraft, P. K. Weber, I. D. Hutcheon, and S. G. Boxer, "Supported membrane composition analysis by secondary ion mass spectrometry with high lateral resolution , " Biophysical Journal, 88, 2965-2975 (2005). Cover article.
  • M.L. Kraft and J.S. Moore, "Multitechnique characterization of fatty acid-modified microgels," Langmuir, 20, 1111-1119 (2004).
  • M.L. Kraft and J.S. Moore, "n-Alkyl fatty acid-modified microgels: Ion permeation as a function of chain length," Langmuir, 19, 910-915 (2003).
  • M.L. Kraft and J.S. Moore, "Surfactant-induced lysis of lipid-modified microgels," Journal of the American Chemical Society, 123, 12921-12922 (2001).
  • D. J. Beebe, J. S. Moore, Q. Yu, R. H. Liu, M. L. Kraft, B.-H. Jo, and C. Devadoss, "Microfluidic tectonics: A comprehensive platform for microfluidic systems," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97, 13488-13493 (2000).

Honors

  • Excellence in Advising Award, College of Engineering, University of Illinois, UC, 2008
  • Career Award at the Scientific Interface, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, 2007-2011
  • Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institutes of Health, 2003-2007
  • School of Chemical Sciences Excellence in Teaching, 2014-2015
  • American Vacuum Society (AVS) Prairie Chapter Early-Career Research Award, 2015
  • Walter A. Shaw Young Investigator Award in Lipid Research (ASBMB), 2014
  • Robert W. Schaefer Faculty Scholar in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Univ. of Illinois, 2016-2019
  • Chien Family Professorial Scholar, 2019-

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