New Faculty Spotlight: Kate Carroll, Ph.D.

As a newcomer to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Professor Kate Carroll, Ph.D., is already enjoying being part of a growing research community that is both collaborative and innovative. She joined Florida Atlantic University in 2024, after serving as a faculty member for 14 years at Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology in Jupiter, Florida. 

“Working with students and trainees at Florida Atlantic is especially rewarding,” shared Carroll. “They bring fresh perspectives and curiosity, which energizes our research and teaching environment.” 

Currently, Carroll develops chemical tools to study cysteine oxidation in proteins—a reversible switch that controls many cellular processes. By creating new probes and proteomic strategies, her lab maps how these switches shape protein function in health and disease, generating insights that are already informing new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics targeting redox-sensitive proteins. 

“This work is most immediately relevant to metabolic reprogramming in cancer and immunity, cardiometabolic disease and aging, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, where cysteine oxidation rewires key pathways and opens new opportunities for therapeutic intervention.” 

Early on, Carroll was fascinated by the idea that chemistry could explain the molecular basis of life. Biochemistry allowed her to connect her love of problem-solving in chemistry with a passion for understanding human health and disease. As an outstanding scientist, Carroll hopes that her career shows young women that it is possible to thrive in research, teaching and leadership, while bringing your own perspective to science. 

“Representation matters. I encourage women in STEM to be bold, to seek out mentors and to recognize that their unique contributions are essential to moving science forward,” expressed Carroll. 

Throughout her impressive career, Carroll has garnered numerous awards and accolades, including the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, which recognized her team’s early work on chemical tools to study redox regulation. More recently, her group’s publications in Nature Chemistry (2021) and Nature Chemical Biology (2023) have been exciting milestones for Carroll’s lab, helping establish new frontiers for probing oxidative signaling in living systems. 

With robust support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), Carroll’s program brings significant momentum to Florida Atlantic’s growing profile in biomedical discovery.