Marcos Sotomayor received his B.Sc. in Physics from Universidad de Chile in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. As a graduate student with Dr. Klaus Schulten in the theoretical and computational biophysics group he did molecular dynamics simulations of proteins involved in mechanotransduction. His computational studies predicted the conductance of the ion channel MscS structure, as well as the elasticity of ankyrin and cadherin repeats. After finishing his Ph.D., he joined the laboratories of David P. Corey and Rachelle Gaudet to do experimental work as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. There he solved the first X-ray crystal structure of a heterophilic cadherin complex essential for hearing and balance. During his postdoctoral tenure he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney foundation. Marcos received a prestigious NIH K99/R00 award and started at OSU in July of 2013. In 2015 he received a Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor award from the undergraduate research office at OSU and was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Neuroscience.
