Eva Karasmanis

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy

Research Interests

The Karasmanis lab is a biophysics lab studying the physical principles that govern how cells organize, move, and exchange material, both within a single cell and between neighboring cells. We're especially interested in the self-organization of cytoskeletal filaments, motor proteins, and their regulators into functional transport networks: active, non-equilibrium systems that convert chemical energy into directed mechanical work. We are also interested in tunneling nanotubes, a recently discovered form of direct cell-cell connection that co-opts this transport machinery to allow cells to physically exchange organelles, nucleic acids, and signaling components. We combine quantitative live-cell imaging, correlative light-electron microscopy, cryo-electron tomography, and biochemical reconstitution to resolve the structure and dynamics of these transport systems at high spatial and temporal resolution, linking molecular-scale architecture to cell-scale function. Because intercellular transport pathways are hijacked or dysregulated in diseases ranging from cancer and pathogen infection to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, our work aims to connect the physical mechanisms of cell biology to therapeutically relevant questions.

Bio

Dr. Karasmanis completed her PhD in Cell Biology at Drexel University in the laboratory of Dr. Elias Spiliotis, and her postdoctoral training at the University of California San Diego in the laboratory of Dr. Samara Reck-Peterson, where she developed expertise in advanced imaging and quantitative approaches to studying cellular organization at the molecular level.

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