Ashot Papoyan is a Research Associate at Tetragenetics Inc. He joined Tetragenetics after completing his Ph.D. at Cornell University in the Department of Plant Biology. During his graduate studies he majored in Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology where he was studying heavy metal accumulation and detoxification in hyperaccumulator plants. Before starting his graduate program Dr. Papoyan worked in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Cornell University, where he was studying the mechanisms of interaction between GTP-binding protein (Cdc42) and its biological targets. Dr. Papoyan completed his undergraduate and Masters degrees in the Department of Biophysics at Yerevan State University, in Yerevan, Armenia. During his Masters program he was studying the effects of steroid hormones on phospholipid composition of rat brain nuclear membranes.