Zev Gartner is native to Santa Cruz, California. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1999, where he conducted undergraduate research in the laboratory of Y. K. Shin. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from Harvard University in 2004, where he worked with Professor David Liu to develop DNA Templated Synthesis as a strategy for building and evolving drug-like small molecules. In 2005 he returned to UC Berkeley for postdoctoral training with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi. While in Professor Bertozzi's lab, he explored DNA Programmed Assembly as a bottom-up method for building three-dimensional tissues. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Research in the Gartner Lab is focused on the role of tissue self-organization and other collective cell behaviors in human development and disease.