Dr. Arvind “Rasi” Subramaniam studies how cells produce proteins, one of biology’s most fundamental processes. The process can go awry in certain disease states, including cancer, and Dr. Subramaniam examines how certain alterations in protein synthesis may lead to disease. He uses both experimental and computational methods to better understand how cells build proteins, including how they cope when problems arise. Dr. Subramaniam’s quest to understand this fundamental process spans life forms from bacteria to mammalian cells. From this work, his lab has uncovered a quality control mechanism in cells that detects collisions between the molecular machines that produce proteins, called ribosomes, as they move along stretches of messenger RNA.