Mandë Holford

Dr. Mandë Holford is as an Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College. Her joint appointments reflect her interdisciplinary research, which goes from mollusks to medicine, combining chemistry and biology to discover, characterize, and deliver novel peptides from venomous marine snails as tools for manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer.

She has received several awards including being recently named a New Champion Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum, the prestigious Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and named a 21st Century Chemist in the NBC-Learn, Chemistry Now series.

Dr. Holford is actively involved in science education, advancing the public understanding of science, and science diplomacy. She is the co-founder of KillerSnails.com, a learning games company that uses extreme creatures, like venomous marine snails, as a conduit to advance scientific learning on a global scale.

She is also co-founder of RAISEW.org, an NSF project to increase women in science. Dr. Holford codeveloped a premier Science Diplomacy course at The Rockefeller University to encourage early career scientists to think globally about the impacts of their research as it pertains to international relations.

Dr. Holford is a Life Member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a AAAS Science &Technology Policy Fellow. Dr. Holford received her PhD in Synthetic Protein Chemistry from The Rockefeller University.