Biography

Matt received a B.S. in Biochemistry and Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1999, where he worked for Robin Polt on glycosylation reactions and the synthesis of glycosylated analogs of enkephalin peptides. He then moved to Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab at the University of California Berkeley and focused on the synthesis of complex carbohydrates and the development of chemical tools to analyze glycosylation, receiving a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2004. He was then an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in Tom Muir’s lab at Rockefeller University, where he developed technologies to control proteins in living cells and for the incorporation of modifications into semi-synthetic proteins. He joined the faculty at USC in 2009. His research focuses on the development of bioorthogonal chemical reporters and synthetic proteins to investigate the role of posttranslational modifications, with a particular interest in the intracellular form of glycosylation termed O-GlcNAc modification.

Awards

• 2005 - American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship

• 2012 - Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award

• 2013 - Chemical Communications Emerging Investigator

• 2013 - USC General Education Teaching Award

• 2014 - Susan G. Komen Career Catalyst Award

• 2015 - American Cancer Society Research Scholar

• 2015 - ACS Carbohydrate Division - David Y. Gin Young Investigator Award

• 2016 - American Cancer Society Hope Award

• 2018 - USC Mentoring Award (Graduate Students)

• 2020 - Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award

• 2021 - ACS Carbohydrate Division - Horace S. Isbell Award