Rate My Professor Monica Pillon

Monica Pillon, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Structural Biology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, where she has been appointed since 2024. She earned her PhD in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences from McMaster University in 2014, followed by a fellowship at McMaster University in 2015 and a fellowship at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS/NIH) in 2020. Prior to her current role, Pillon served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Baylor College of Medicine from 2021 to 2024. Her multidisciplinary research program combines RNA-protein biochemistry, enzymology, structural biology techniques such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and X-ray crystallography, and cell biology to investigate the mechanisms governing human ribonucleases in RNA processing and decay pathways. These studies address how ribonucleases maintain cellular homeostasis and contribute to gene expression dysregulation in disease, with expertise in gene expression, metalloenzymes, mitochondria, molecular and cellular biology, molecular basis of disease, protein function and structure, RNA, and structural biology.

Pillon has earned several honors, including the NIEHS Paper of the Year (2021), RiboClub's Best Micro-talk Award (2020), Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal (2014), NIEHS Fellow of the Year (2018), and International Union of Crystallography's Poster Award (2014). She is principal investigator on an NIGMS grant titled "New Mechanisms of the Pseudouridine Synthase Module in Mitoribosome Assembly" (2024-2027). Key publications include "CryoEM structure of the SLFN14 endoribonuclease reveals insight into RNA binding and cleavage" (Nature Communications, 2025), "FASTK Post-Transcriptional Regulators – A ‘FAST-tracK’ in Mitochondrial Gene Expression" (Biochemical Society Transactions, 2025), "MYC Induces Oncogenic Stress through RNA Decay and Ribonucleotide Catabolism in Breast Cancer" (Cancer Discovery, 2024), and "Cryo-EM structures of the SARS-CoV-2 endoribonuclease Nsp15 reveal insight into nuclease specificity and dynamics" (Nature Communications, 2021). Pillon co-organized the inaugural Western New York Structural Biology Collaborative Symposium in 2025.