Catherine Royer

Dr. Catherine Royer is a Professor and Constellation Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Her research focuses on understanding protein folding mechanisms, cellular responses to environmental pressures, and the molecular basis of cell cycle regulation in budding yeast. She holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (1979) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1985).

Dr. Royer’s work integrates biophysical techniques like high-pressure NMR and fluorescence microscopy to study protein dynamics, stress responses, and transcriptional networks. Her lab investigates how cells adapt to extreme conditions, particularly through pressure-induced changes in protein structure and function. She has held academic positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and INSERM in France before joining RPI in 2013.

Her recent publications emphasize AI-driven cellular imaging, allosteric regulation in GTPases, and the interplay between cell size and transcriptional timing during the cell cycle. She leads interdisciplinary projects on extremophile biology and protein engineering for biomedical applications.

Dr. Royer’s research is supported by grants exploring pressure adaptation, transcriptional networks, and super-resolution imaging. Her lab collaborates widely, advancing quantitative biology and biophysics at the cellular and molecular scales.