10/06/2026
⬇️ Check out this excellent feature on Pablo Garcia ’23 (Chemical Engineering)!
: “I was born in Cuba, and I came to New Jersey when I was 11. I did my undergrad at Yale Engineering. My parents had done their education in Cuba, but they wanted a better education and more opportunities for me. They basically came here and started from nothing. I’ve worked and studied hard to advance, and my parents have been a great help even though I can’t communicate to them what I do at 100% accuracy. I’ve connected with people here at who are first-generation or international students. My adviser, (assistant professor) Jerelle Joseph, is also from the Caribbean, so she understands.
Princeton’s chemical and biological engineering program has some of the leading scientists in the field, and it has provided a good jumping off point from what I did in undergrad, which was theory and computation. In my graduate research I’m continuing with theory and computation but in a way that’s more relevant to health and disease.
In our lab, we study biomolecular condensates — phase-separated compartments of proteins, kind of like drops of oil in water. We use molecular dynamics to look at how mutations in the proteins that form these condensates lead to aberrant behaviors seen in conditions like dementia, ALS and cancers.
I’m working to understand the physiochemical principles that lead to the organization of condensates. We want to understand how their sequences translate into distinct dynamics within these compartments, and in turn, different material properties. When we understand this, we can engineer new materials and possible solutions to diseases, like through sequestering molecules that tune the condensates.” – Pablo Garcia, Ph.D. candidate, CBE (shown here presenting a research poster at the Biophysical Society 2026 Annual Meeting in San Francisco)
