Markita Landry is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Department of Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in chemical physics and a certificate in business administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellowship in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Her research centers on the development of synthetic nanoparticle-polymer conjugates for imaging neuromodulation in the brain, on the study of lipid nanoparticle-cell membrane interactions, and for the delivery of genetic materials into plants. Landry is a member of the scientific advisory boards and a consultant for several major agricultural companies, and co-founder and CSO of Biophilia Genetics. She is a recipient of over 40 career awards, including awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Schmidt Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the DARPA Young Investigator program, the Beckman Young Investigator program, the NSF CAREER award, and the Sloan research fellowship. Landry has also received numerous prizes recognizing her contributions to science, including the 2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, the 2024 Blavatnik National Prize as a laureate in chemistry, and the 2025 Guggenheim fellowship.