Julie Kadrmas, PhD, is a research assistant professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah and an investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute. She studies the role of integrins in development and disease.

Integrins are cell surface receptors that play a major role in communication between cells and their environment. They regulate cellular behaviors such as adhesion, migration, proliferation, and survival. Integrin function is critical in normal developmental contexts and in abnormal processes that lead to disease such as cancer. Integrins act through large complexes of signaling proteins recruited to their cytoplasmic face. Kadrmas is interested in how these signaling complexes are regulated—or misregulated in disease—and in understanding how protein composition directs cellular behavior.

Kadrmas received her PhD in biochemistry from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah. Before her appointment as assistant professor, she was a Huntsman Cancer Institute research associate from 2001 to 2005 under the mentorship of Mary Beckerle, PhD.