Joshua A Riback

Joshua A Riback is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. His research focuses on the biophysical principles governing biological condensates, including their roles in cellular processes, disease mechanisms, and macromolecular assembly. He leads the Cellular Physical Chemistry Group (Riback Lab), which bridges biology and physics to study condensate dynamics in health and disease.

Education:

• B.A. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University
• Ph.D. in Biophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University

Research Interests: Dr. Riback investigates how biological condensates reorganize biomolecules in response to cellular signals, particularly during differentiation, oncogenesis, and aging. His lab explores the thermodynamics of phase separation, condensate-driven macromolecular assembly (e.g., ribosomes, spliceosomes), and the impact of compositional changes on disease pathways like cancer and neurodegeneration.

Labs/Teams: The Riback Lab at Baylor College of Medicine fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, combining tools from molecular biology, biophysics, and computational modeling. Current projects address condensate formation mechanisms, chaperone roles in macromolecular assembly, and therapeutic vulnerabilities in NPM1-mutant leukemias.