Joel received a BS in biomedical engineering and BA in government from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from Cambridge University working with Prof. John Walker. He did postdoctoral work with Prof. Sriram Subramaniam at the NIH where he applied cryo-electron tomography to understand how the HIV Env protein mediates T-cell infection, and studied ionotropic glutamate receptor structure and gating mechanisms using single particle cryo-electron microscopy. He did additional postdoctoral work with Prof. Christopher Miller at Brandeis University before coming to Weill Cornell Medical College as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. His current work is focused on understanding the organization and signaling mechanisms of protein complexes in the central nervous system.
