Non-Tenure Track Faculty Research Excellence Awards 2023

Parastoo Azadi is the  associate director of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center for service and training, as well as a senior research scientist and globally recognized expert in the field of glycoscience. With a rare breadth of expertise, she guides analyses of microbial, viral, plant and animal glycans, helping drive progress in glycobiology in academia and industry. For nearly three decades, Azadi has directed the world’s leading center for glyco-analytics techniques, the CCRC’s Analytical Services and Training Laboratory. She’s led multi-million-dollar efforts to develop improved tools for glyco-analytics, co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and is principal investigator for the CCRC’s Department of Energy-funded Center for Plant and Microbial Complex Carbohydrates. At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, hers was among the first groups in the world to report on the sugar chain structure on SARS-CoV-2’s spike glycoprotein and later studied glycosylation differences in the five SARS-CoV-2 variants, including the highly transmissible Delta and Omicron strains.