Welcome to the Kraft Group website

The Kraft group combines engineering principles and traditional experimental approaches with cutting-edge imaging technologies to overcome critical barriers to progress in biomedical research. We focus on identifying, and exploiting the relationship between plasma membrane composition/ organization and cell function. A key aspect of our research is the combination of computational statistics with chemical imaging techniques for quantitative single cell analysis with location specificity. By combining these enabling tools with existing approaches that provide complementary information, we can identify the mechanisms that establish cell membrane organization, correlate changes in cell surface composition/ organization with altered cellular function, and exploit this relationship to predict, and ultimately, control cell function. Because many medically relevant processes involve the cell membrane, including virus infection, targeted drug delivery, cell recognition, and cell signaling, our research has applications in a broad range of biomedical research areas.

Professor: Mary L Kraft
University of Illinois
600 S Mathews Ave
208 RAL, MC-712
Urbana, IL 61801
phone: 217-333-2228
fax: 217-333-5052
e-mail:

The Kraft research group is an affiliated member of the
Department of Chemistry and the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign