Christina Bergonzo (Fed)

Christina Bergonzo joined NIST in 2017 as a NIST NRC Postdoctoral Fellow, based at IBBR, where her work focuses on computational chemistry and structural biology. She received a B.S. in Chemistry from Manhattan College and a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in Chemistry, where her dissertation centered on free energy pathway predictions of a DNA repair enzyme. She completed postdoctoral work in enhanced sampling of nucleic acids at the University of Utah prior to coming to NIST. 

Currently, she is working on optimization of force fields used for computational simulations of the structure and dynamics of nucleic acids, as well as connection of experimental measurements to molecular dynamics simulations of large, multi-domain proteins. She maintains several collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies working to combine all atom simulations to enhance and interpret experimental techniques including NMR, Mass Spectrometry, X-ray crystallography and scattering data.  Christina has served as a mentor of a number of pos-docs, post-bacs, and undergraduate research interns. 

Selected Programs/Projects

• Predicting stability of nucleic acid biopharmaceutical products using advanced computational modeling techniques
• Integrated structural biology predicting and quantifying nucleic acid structure
• Flexible protein simulations of monoclonal antibodies to enable platform development 

Credit: Christina Bergonzo and Travis Gallagher

• ACS Division of Computers in Chemistry Women Make COMP Plenary Speaker, Spring 2026
• IBBR Fellow, 2025
• NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, January 2017 – January 2019
• Postdoctoral Travel Assistance Award, University of Utah Graduate School, Summer 2014
• Chemistry Award for Outstanding Doctoral Student, Stony Brook University, Spring 2012
• Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award, Spring ACS 2011
• NSF IGERT Trainee, Summer 2007 – 2011