Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu is a principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the New Mexico Consortium, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

As a principal investigator, Sanbonmatsu has advanced our understanding of the mechanism of the ribosome, antibiotics and riboswitches. She published some of the first structural studies of epigenetic long non-coding RNAs and is currently studying the mechanism of epigenetic effects involving chromatin architecture. She uses a combination of wetlab biochemistry, supercomputers and cryogenic electron microscopy to investigate mechanism in atomistic detail. She is on the board of Equality New Mexico and the Gender Identity Center and is an advocate for LGBT people in the sciences.