Andrea A. Putnam, a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health assistant professor of biomolecular chemistry, has been named a 2025 Packard Foundation Fellow in Science and Engineering.
Putnam’s research focuses on how RNA and proteins organize into specialized structures within cells called germ granules that help orchestrate gene expression during development. She is one of 20 early-career scientists from across the United States to be awarded this year’s Packard Fellowship. The fellowship provides $875,000 in funding over five years to pursue research.
Putnam leads a laboratory that uses the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode, to understand how membrane-less condensates of RNA and protein operate as key organizers of biomolecules across cellular processes.
Because the molecular complexity and dynamic nanoscale substructures of condensates limit efforts to define function, Putnam is developing new approaches to investigate condensates in a developmental context, providing avenues to uncover principles of cellular regulation and disease.
Her innovative approaches to studying these elusive and biochemically complex structures include observing live cells in combination with genetic, biochemical, biophysical, and theoretical analyses.
Putnam’s goal is to discover how condensates determine key processes that affect development, genetic inheritance, enzymatic activity and cellular responses to stress, among other phenomena.
Understanding the role of germ granules could be pivotal because they are found widely in germ cells of sexually reproducing animals, including germline stem cells, oocytes, sperm, and embryos. They play essential roles in fertility, gene regulation, and the epigenetic inheritance across generations through small RNA pathways, but exactly how this occurs is largely unknown.
“Although germ granules were first glimpsed in the late 1970s using electron microscopy and cytochemistry, key experimental approaches such as CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, quantitative live cell imaging, single molecule imaging, and super-resolution microscopy have only become available recently,” said Putnam. “Understanding how condensates regulate fundamental biological processes will require a wide range of techniques and our work to date has resulted in surprising and exciting insights.”
The flexible funding provided by the Packard Fellowship motivated Putnam to pursue the award, which supports creative and collaborative approaches to research. In 2025 she received funding through an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) for research on how a class of RNA helicases regulate RNA condensates during development.
“Dr. Putnam’s research program exemplifies the value of taking all means possible to understand the molecular underpinnings of biological processes,” said Patricia Kiley, chair of the department of biomolecular chemistry. “The breadth and impact of her work is inspiring to students and colleagues alike, and perfectly aligns with our research and educational missions.”
Support from the Packard fellowship will allow Putnam to pursue cutting-edge imaging techniques to understand how cells are organized at the nanoscale during the earliest stages of development, how this organization changes dynamically as development progresses, and how it becomes disrupted in response to stress or disease.
“Imaging technologies are evolving rapidly, with new approaches emerging that let us see smaller and more dynamic structures inside cells,” said Putnam. “Support from the Packard community will enable us to work right at that frontier and connect with scientists tackling the challenge of visualizing the invisible in fields from astronomy to engineering.”
Putnam joins other UW–Madison Packard Fellowship winners from past years, each of whom has been chosen from nominees from 50 universities across the country by an advisory panel of distinguished scientists and engineers. Over the decades, many of the 735 scientists and engineers supported by the Packard Foundation have gone on to receive some of the field’s highest honors, including Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics, Fields Medals, Alan T. Waterman Awards, Breakthrough Prizes, Kavli Prizes, and elections to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
This extraordinary class of Fellows joins a community whose discoveries are shaping the world today and whose ideas will fuel the breakthroughs of tomorrow.
- Dr. Richard Alley, Chair of the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering Advisory Panel
