Joel Finbloom

PhD
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia
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Joel Finbloom, PhD is a 2025 Gairdner Early Career Investigator.

He is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. The Finbloom lab develops bioinspired materials that interface with microbial communities to tackle critical challenges in pharmaceutical sciences — treating antibiotic resistant bacterial infections and improving the oral delivery of bacterial therapeutics.

Dr. Finbloom started his scientific career at the NIH in 2008, where he worked for four summers under the mentorship of Dr. Kathryn Zoon to develop cancer immunotherapies. Dr. Finbloom received his BA in chemistry in 2013 from Northwestern University, while conducting research in the laboratory of Professor Samuel Stupp, engineering stimuli-responsive peptide nanomaterials for cancer drug delivery. Dr. Finbloom earned his PhD in Chemistry in 2018 from the University of California Berkeley, working in the lab of Professor Matthew Francis to combine the fields of biomaterials and chemical biology for applications in protein modification and nanomedicine. Dr. Finbloom then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Tejal Desai at UCSF, where he developed nanomaterials-based strategies for antimicrobial drug delivery and regenerative medicine. A central theme throughout Dr. Finbloom’s research is the physicochemical design of nanomaterials to direct bio-material interactions and improve therapeutic outcomes.