Brandon Mercado, PhD

Dr. Brandon Quesada Mercado is the Director of Core Facilities at Stony Brook University, where he leads the strategic development, coordination, and growth of the university’s shared research infrastructure. He brings more than a decade of experience overseeing advanced scientific instrumentation and research support programs, most recently as Director of the Structural Science Facility at Yale University.

At Yale, Dr. Mercado managed a broad portfolio of high-performance resources including single-crystal X-ray diffraction, Microcrystal Electron Diffraction (MicroED), powder diffraction, micro-CT, and SAXS/WAXS. He expanded the facility’s capabilities through successful competition for research instrumentation funding, including support that positioned Yale as one of the first institutions in the nation with a dedicated MicroED system. His leadership in access, training, and user support earned him Yale’s prestigious Linda K. Lorimer Award for Distinguished Service. He is also a 2025 grantee of the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network for his contributions to scientific training and community building.

Dr. Mercado has contributed as a co-author to more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has taught graduate-level crystallography for many years. He has held national leadership roles within the Structural Science Society and has been an invited instructor at multiple national workshops. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis, and completed a Department of Energy postdoctoral fellowship at UC Irvine.