Monika Sommerhalter

Monika Sommerhalter is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at California State University East Bay (CSUEB). She leads the Sommerhalter Lab, focusing on enzymology, structural biology, and plant biochemistry. Her research explores enzyme mechanisms, extremophilic proteins, and biocatalytic systems.

Current research group members include undergraduate researchers like Thuy Vi Truong and graduate students such as Boquan Huang. Past collaborations involved projects on plant stress responses, microbial enzymes, and protein engineering. She has advised numerous students in biochemical experiments and enzymatic studies.

Her lab's work spans diverse areas including polyphenol oxidase activity in fruits, catalase variants in extremophiles, and structural characterization of nucleotide processing enzymes. She actively engages in biocatalysis through sol-gel encapsulation techniques.

Teaching contributions include methodologies for protein crystallography resolution using COOT software. Her research has been published in high-impact journals across biochemistry, enzymology, and structural biology disciplines.