Mark聽Kowalewski successfully defended his dissertation entitled 鈥淢ucin degrading glycoside hydrolases in the gut microbiome鈥� on March 31, 2025, under the direction of Dr. Matthew Redinbo.
Mark聽earned his B.S. in Chemistry from 黑料网 in 2018 before joining a small biotechnology company in Durham developing microbiome-targeting small molecule inhibitors.
In 2021,聽Mark聽joined the lab of Matthew Redinbo in the Biophysics track of BCBP. His graduate research focused on the structural and functional landscape of gut microbial glycoside hydrolases and their involvement in mucin glycan degradation. Specifically, he examined the role of
尾-galactosidases and 伪-fucosidases in glycan degradation.聽 Additionally,聽Mark聽studied Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) orthologs in microbial pathogens, using structural biology to design Hsp90-targeting tethered inhibitors capable of localizing a toxin to live Borrelia burgdorferi. He also worked on a project studying Hsp90 in the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans, screening a library of 1000 fragment compounds and solving several crystal structures of Hsp90 in ligand-bound states.