Cell scientist to watch – Kamena Kostova

ABSTRACT Kamena Kostova is an Assistant Investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research (Missouri, USA). Originally from Bulgaria, she moved to the United States to pursue a B.S. in Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge). For her PhD, she joined the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF, USA), where she worked with Jonathan Weissman to study how yeast and mammalian cells cope with defects in ribosomes and protein production. After completing her PhD in 2018, Kamena received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's Early Independence Award and started her own lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science (Washington DC, USA). In 2024, she moved to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, where her group investigates ribosome quality control mechanisms and their impact in health and disease. We spoke with Kamena over Zoom to learn more about her jump into an early independent career, her approach to building a productive and inclusive lab culture and her love for sourdough baking.