Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi (born October 10, 1966) is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology.

Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19.

[4] Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)[5] and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

In 2014, it was announced that Bertozzi would lead ACS Central Science, the American Chemical Society's first peer-reviewed open access journal, which offers all content free to the public.

[12] Carolyn Bertozzi received her B.A., summa cum laude, in chemistry from Harvard University, where she worked with Professor Joe Grabowski on the design and construction of a photoacoustic calorimeter.

[14] While an undergraduate, she played in several bands, notably Bored of Education with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

[17] Bertozzi completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with Mark Bednarski, working on the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs.

[21][22] After graduating from Berkeley with a Ph.D., Bertozzi was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with Steven Rosen, where she studied the activity of endothelial oligosaccharides in promoting cell adhesion at inflammation sites.

[28][29][30] This new field and technique allows researchers to chemically modify molecules in living organisms and not interrupt the processes of the cell.

[36] In 2001, Bertozzi and Steve Rosen co-founded Thios Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, California, the first company to target sulfation pathways.

[44] In 2017, Bertozzi helped found InterVenn Biosciences, which uses mass spectrometry and artificial intelligence to enhance glycoproteomics for target and biomarker discovery, ovarian cancer diagnostics, and predicting the successes and failures of clinical trials.

[28] Bertozzi also previously served on the research advisory board of several pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, and until 2021 Eli Lilly.

Her talent on the keyboard earned her offers as a music major from several university rock bands, but she felt that she was "always centered on the sciences".