John Blazeck, associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), has won a 2026 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Blazeck will receive $647,941 over five years for “Creating and evolving antibodies from scratch in yeast.”

Antibodies are key proteins of the immune system that help fight disease. In people, immune cells called B cells create antibodies and then evolve them. B cells take months to do this, which makes it difficult to study antibody creation and evolution, Blazeck explained.

His CAREER project will design a method to evolve antibodies “from scratch” in yeast, which will open new avenues for exploring antibody creation, evolution, and function. 

“The results of the project will provide insights into the formulation of more effective disease-targeting therapeutics,” he said. “The project will support project-based course development and the creation of educational apps to train students in synthetic biology and biotechnology.”

Blazeck, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, joined the faculty of ChBE in 2019. He is the School’s Cecil J. "Pete" Silas Faculty Fellow. 

His honors include a Beckman Young Investigator Award that allowed his lab to initiate and de-risk the concept of yeast-based antibody evolution, a Singh Family Research Award for a project focused on engineering next-generation cancer immunotherapies, and a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health Common Funds’ High-Risk, High-Reward Program. In 2022, he was named by Popular Science as one of the “The Brilliant 10: The top up-and-coming minds in science.”