QCRG TEAM

QBI UCSF

David is focused on trying to understand the molecular basis of how complex machinery in the cell functions. His particular take on it is to try to resolve the atomic structures of key molecules and to figure out how they work from that, while also looking at where they go wrong in disease. 

QBI UCSF

Alan focuses on understanding breast cancer genetics and applying what he learns to change the way patients are treated.  He has a passion for translating laboratory studies into improvements in patient care, particularly by the development of personalized cancer medicine.

Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich

Pedro focuses on studying the cellular consequences of genetic variation. His lab's long term goal is to have comprehensive models of how DNA changes result in differences in biomolecules, their interactions and ultimately different traits or disease.

QBI UCSF

Yifan is interested in studying the three-dimensional structures of macromolecular complexes: their structural architectures, the regulation of their function, and the dynamic processes of their assembly and disassembly, by molecular electron microscopy (cryoEM).

QBI UCSF

Charles uses chemistry to answer important biological questions at the interface between biology, medicine and pharmacy. He identifies the roles and regulates the activity of proteases associated with infectious diseases, cancer and development.

QBI UCSF/Gladstone Institutes

Bruce aims to cure genetic diseases using state-of-the-art genome-engineering technology. This involves using patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to derive tissue from patients who carry disease mutations that could benefit from therapeutic genome editing with CRISPR.

QBI UCSF

Faranak focuses on using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to study the peripheral nervous system (PNS) in health and disease. The PNS is an intricate network of various cell types that regulate the vital activities of almost every organ in the human body.

QBI UCSF

Stephen studies the mechanisms by which RNA impacts human gene expression in health and disease. RNA chaperones are a major focus of his lab, which remodel RNA structures and RNA-protein interactions.

QBI UCSF

Alan focuses on RNA-protein recognition and the assembly of RNA-based regulatory complexes. His lab uses biochemistry, structural methods, proteomics, and virology to investigate essential regulatory complexes in HIV.

QBI UCSF

James looks at proteins and macromolecules within cells and tries to determine what structures they take on, what their shapes are and how they move between structures as they execute their functions within cells to quantify how these perturbations impact protein function and organismal fitness.

QBI UCSF

Adam strives to see how macromolecules get together and come to life. His lab seeks to understand how fuel-driven biological machines work–especially those that are too fragile to purify, too dynamic or too flexible to crystallize, and that depend on lipids for their form and function. 

QBI UCSF

Danica works on the identification of new potential drug targets to determine the context in which proteins can serve as drug targets, and to identify small molecules that could act to stop pathogenic proteins from acting in ways to cause disease.

QBI UCSF

John investigates molecular machines that coordinate gene expression or antiviral immunity. His research areas include RNA decay enzymes that act in mRNA quality control and gene regulatory pathways, and nucleic acid based immune systems that protect animals from viruses and neutralization of these systems by viral accessory proteins.

QBI UCSF

Roshanak is focused on researching organelle-based signaling in response to external cues. Her lab uses novel biosensors, sophisticated microscopy, cell biology, pharmacology and physiology to study the compartmentalized signaling.

QBI UCSF

Matt focuses on developing new computational methods for drug discovery, as well as general tools that can be applied to almost every area of drug discovery. His software is used by essentially all of the major pharmaceutical companies.

QBI UCSF

Natalia researches what regulates growth signals in a cell and looks at how cells grow under normal situations when they are healthy, and then what goes wrong during diseases. She looks at the molecular machines, the proteins themselves, and how they change in response to the binding of ligands.

QBI UCSF

Martin develops and applies innovative technologies to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms of human diseases, and to discover new therapeutic strategies. A major focus of his team's research are neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. 

QBI UCSF

Michael combines machine learning and chemical biology methods to investigate how small molecules perturb protein networks to achieve therapeutic effects.

QBI UCSF

Tanja develops methods to engineer biological molecules, proteins that have new biological functions. She does so by developing computational algorithms that help create detailed models of these proteins so that they can be designed at atom-level detail.

QBI UCSF

Nevan focuses on developing tools that allows one to globally study the function of genes and proteins and how they work together, and targets genes that are in many disease areas in an effort to help find new therapies for diseases.

QBI UCSF

Aashish seeks to understand how cells sense and respond to their external environment. In this endeavor, his lab studies the numerous proteins that lie at the cellular surface that enable individual cells to decipher the enormous number of stimuli that coordinate normal physiology. 

QBI UCSF

Shaeri elucidates how intracellular bacterial pathogens manipulate Rab function to promote their virulence and to uncover fundamental principles of membrane traffic. To accomplish this, she utilizes the intracellular pathogen Legionella pneumophila as a model, which in turn can be applied to other disease states.

QBI UCSF

Dyche focuses on how nanometer-sized biological molecules transmit and integrate information across much larger length scales: microns, millimeters, and beyond. His aim is to understand how collections of macromolecules work together to establish a common identity: to become living cells. 

QBI UCSF 

Geeta studies chromatin and the many processes involved in its regulation. She is an expert in the fields of epigenetic regulation and genome organization, and studies how the folding and compartmentalization of our genome is regulated to generate the many cell types that make up our body.

Gladstone Institutes/QBI UCSF 

Melanie is interested in the molecular mechanisms of viral pathogenesis. She focuses on HIV-1 and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV). Her HIV efforts focus on viral transcription and latency as remaining barriers to viral eradication.

Chan Zuckerberg Biohub

Andreas focuses on using CRISPR and other powerful genetic screens to study both persistent and emerging viruses as well as cellular pathways important for their virulence.

UCSF/Gladstone Institutes

Vijay is focused on understanding how protein-nucleic acid interactions, transcriptional dynamics, and translational dynamics vary in the face of diverse cellular inputs, and how these phenomena ultimately encode cellular phenotype.

QBI UCSF

Oren studies and treats infectious diseases. His goal is to discover and exploit molecular vulnerabilities in bacteria in order to design faster, cheaper, less toxic and more effective therapeutics to treat life-threatening infections.

QBI UCSF

Davide works on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which impairments in accurate control of mRNA translation, cell growth, and overall cellular protein synthesis rates lead to human disease and cancer.

QBI UCSF

Andrej is interested in describing structures of proteins and their complexes, how the systems work, and how we can modulate their functions with other molecules. He uses information that comes from different experimental methods, computation methods and statistical analyses.

QBI UCSF 

Dean focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying pulmonary (and other organ) fibrosis, asthma and acute lung injury. One aim of his research is to identify new therapeutic targets to ultimately improve the treatment of each of these common diseases.

QBI UCSF

Brian researches the discovery of new molecules to modulate drug targets, and trying to  de-orphanize receptors in the body. He tries to discover molecules that will inform the use of receptors with currently unknown functions.

QBI UCSF

Kevan seeks to uncover fundamental principles of cell signaling that require the development of new chemical tools. He tries to find new drugs that treat different kinds of diseases, like cancer and neurodegeneration, and viral infections.

QBI UCSF

Daniel focuses on understanding molecular chaperones that facilitate protein folding and how they mitigate misfolding events during cellular stress. His team specializes in cryo-electron microscopy to obtain high-resolution snapshots of macromolecular complexes in action.

QBI UCSF

Robert studies the molecular basis of biological function. He is particularly interested in transporters that transport nutrients across the membranes of biological cells to incorporate essential nutrients, and transporters that are  co-opted to eliminate drugs and thus provide for drug resistance.

QBI UCSF

Jack develops small molecules to try to understand how cells work and how to intervene in various disease processes, such as cancer and autoimmune disease.

QBI UCSF

Kliment is a QBI Fellow who specializes in structurally analyzing protein complexes using CryoEM. He focuses on understanding how proteins accomplish their work, by first understanding their molecular structure.

Buck Institute for Research on Aging

Eric studies the relationship between aging and the immune system. He and his team also research how immune aging is regulated by nutrition and seek to define how nutrients influence immune responses during aging.

QBI UCSF

Mark studies the subcellular organization and regulation of receptor-mediated signaling processes.  His team is interested in the organization and regulation of signal transduction occurring in highly differentiated cell types, and on better understanding the cellular basis of drug action. 

QBI UCSF

Jim is interested in how cells change in cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and blood borne cancers, and how they can be treated with antibodies. His antibodies are then cross-referenced in various disease states.

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