[2] Galan was a doctoral researcher in the University of Georgia, where she worked with Geert-Jan Boons on carbohydrates.
[3] After graduating she moved to the Scripps Research Institute, working in the laboratory of Chi-Huey Wong.
[4] She spent two years at the Scripps before moving to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she joined the group of Sarah O'Connor and worked on natural product synthesis.
[5] In 2006 Galan returned to the United Kingdom, where she joined the University of Bristol as a lecturer in chemistry.
An understanding of glycan-based structures and their interactions is expected to help with the design and development of therapeutic tools.