K. Christopher Garcia

K. Christopher Garcia is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Structural Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Garcia’s research interests reside at the cell surface, and his laboratory is investigating structural and functional aspects of cell surface receptor recognition and activation, in receptor-ligand systems with relevance to human health and disease. After two years of post-doctoral work at Genentech. under Dr. David Goeddel in the Department of Molecular Biology, where he learned the emerging technologies of protein engineering and recombinant protein expression, Dr. Garcia moved to a second post-doctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute in the laboratory of Professor Ian Wilson, where he succeeded in determining the first crystal structures of the T cell receptor and then its complex with peptide-MHC. Dr. Garcia started his lab at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1999, where he also became an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Tulane University, and his Ph.D in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Garcia was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and the National Academy of Medicine in 2016.