Guests on The Plunge
Ellen Zhong
Ellen Zhong is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of AI and biology. Her research develops core machine learning techniques that are applied to computational and structural biology problems, with a particular focus on protein structure determination with cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Her work in cryo-EM reconstruction has addressed longstanding problems in visualizing dynamic protein structures and introduced fundamental innovations in implicit neural representations for computer vision. She has interned at DeepMind with the AlphaFold team and previously worked on molecular dynamics algorithms and infrastructure at D. E. Shaw Research. She obtained her Ph.D. from MIT where she worked with Bonnie Berger and Joey Davis and her B.S. from the University of Virginia where she worked with Michael Shirts.
Email: zhonge@princeton.edu
Website: cs.princeton.edu/~zhonge
Twitter: @zhongingalong
Mark Herzik
Mark Herzik is a Searle Scholar and an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His group specializes in developing cryoEM sample preparation methodologies as well as imaging and data processing strategies to visualize small, dynamic macromolecular assemblies at high-resolution. He also dedicates significant effort to developing practical hands-on learning materials for training in cryoEM, including in-person lectures, workshops, and online materials. He was the first in his family to attend college, earning his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences from the University of Houston. He was then an American Heart Association predoctoral fellow at The University of California, Berkeley under Michael Marletta before pioneering cryoEM methodologies in the lab of Gabriel Lander at The Scripps Research Institute as a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow.
Email: mherzik@ucsd.edu
Website: herziklab.com
Twitter: @markherzik
Lisa Eshun-Wilson
Dr. Eshun-Wilson is currently a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Drs. Gabriel Lander and Andrew Ward at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. She completed her PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Eva Nogales at UC Berkeley as a National Science Foundation Fellow. She was awarded the 2020 Cris Alvaro PhD Commencement Prize for her doctoral work on microtubule regulation using cryo-electron microscopy. Dr. Eshun-Wilson is inspired by dynamic, molecular machines that have the power fight disease and reimagine human health.
Email: leshunwilson@scripps.edu
Twitter: @lisaeshunwilson
Melody Campbell
Melody is a biophysicist and structural biologist who studies how cells communicate via the protein receptors expressed on the cell surface. She is an assistant professor in basic sciences and the scientific director of the electron microscopy core at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. She is an active proponent of scientific outreach and communication and is dedicated to sharing STEM opportunities and engaging with diverse groups.
Melody earned a degree in biochemistry from the University of Michigan, where she conducted organic chemistry and biochemistry research. She received her Ph.D. in biophysics from the Scripps Research Institute in 2016 under the supervision of Bridget Carragher and Clinton S. Potter, where she developed new methods in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) to boost resolution and address heterogeneity in protein assemblies. She did her post-doc with Yifan Cheng at the University of California, San Francisco, where she applied these new technologies to map out the structural dynamics of integrin and reveal how it enables an unexpected mechanism for TGF-Beta activation. Currently, she and her lab hope to develop a comprehensive picture of the leukocyte cell surface to understand how white blood cells react to and engage with their surroundings.
Email: melody@fredhutch.org
Website: research.fredhutch.org/campbell
Twitter: @MelodyGCampbell
Yifan Cheng
Dr. Yifan Cheng is currently an Investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Professor at Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He received his Ph.D. degree in 1991 from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). From 1991 to 1996, he continued his research in solid state physics and electron microscopy as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Oslo (NTNF Fellow) and Max-Planck-Institute of Metal Research (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow). In 1996, he changed his research direction to structural biology, and received further training in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) from Professors Kenneth Taylor at Florida State University and Yoshinori Fujiyoshi at Kyoto University. In 1999, he joined the laboratory of Thomas Walz to setup a cryo-EM operation at Harvard Medical School. He joined the faculty of University of California San Francisco in 2006 and has stayed there ever since. He has been an HHMI Investigator since 2015. He is the recipient of the Christian B. Anfinsen Award from The Protein Society (2018), elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Science (2019) and National Academy of Sciences (2020).
His laboratory uses cryo-EM to study structures of biological macromolecules, particularly integral membrane proteins and dynamic complexes. In addition, development of cryo-EM methodology for structural biology is also a long-lasting interest of his laboratory. Previous works of his laboratory include developments of algorithms to correct electron beam-induced image motion and determination of the first atomic structure of TRPV1 by single particle cryo-EM, etc.
Email: yifan.cheng@ucsf.edu
Website: cryoem.ucsf.edu
Twitter: @yifan_ucsf
Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Bridget Carragher
Bridget Carragher received her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Chicago in 1987. She worked in a variety of positions, both in industry and academia before moving to the New York Structural Biology Center in 2015 to lead the Simons Electron Microscopy Center, together with Clint Potter.
Bridget and Clint also direct the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM), the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training (NCCAT), the National Center for In-situ Tomographic Ultramicroscopy (NCITU), and the Simons Machine Learning Center, and founded the company NanoImaging Services in2007.
Bridget and Clint are currently transitioning to new positions as Founding Technical Directors of the newly created Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute.
Email: bcarr@nysbc.org; bcarragher@chanzuckerberg.com; bcarr@nanoimgingservices.com
Website: semc.nysbc.org; nanoimagingservices.com; chanzuckerberg.com/science/imaging-institute/
Twitter: @bcarra2
Co-Director, Simons Electron Microscopy Center, New York Structural Biology Center
Chief Technology Officer, NanoImaging Services
Founding Technical Director, Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute