Alireza Ghanbarpour

Assistant Professor, Washington University at St. Louis

Alireza did his Ph.D. in the chemistry department at Michigan State University before a short post-doc at Yale University in the department of Cell Biology. He was in the Davis lab as a joint postdoc between the Davis and Sauer labs, working to delineate the detailed mechanism of substrate processing by soluble and membrane AAA proteases using cryo-EM, mass spectrometry, and biochemistry.

Andrew Grassetti

PROTEIN SCIENTIST, AERO THERAPUETICS

As a graduate student in Scott Gerber’s lab at Dartmouth College, Andrew developed and applied proteomics techniques in order to better understand the mammalian cell cycle. In the Davis lab, he investigated the role of protein phosphorylation in autophagy, both mechanistically, using biochemical and structural methods, and at a systems level, through the use of mass spectrometry based phosphoproteomics.

OSVALDO CRUZ-RODRIQUEZ

Senior Scientist, “Stealth Startup”

Osvaldo trained in the labs of Jorge Iñiguez-Lluhí, Roger Sunahara, and John Tessmer at the University of Michigan before joining the Davis lab. Using biochemical and structural approaches, Osvaldo worked to understand how cells initiate autophagy and build the protein and lipid structures required to form autophagosomes. He’s also a fantastic mentor - seen here working with a first-year rotation student.

ELLEN ZHONG

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PRINCETOn UNIVERSITY

Ellen worked at D.E. Shaw Research before coming to MIT to learn some experimental biology. In the Davis lab, she developed computational methods to determine structures of highly heterogeneous assembly intermediates by single particle cryo-electron microscopy. Ellen was a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Laurel Kinman

SANDLER Independent fellow, UCSF

Laurel did her undergraduate research at Wellesley in Louise Darling's lab. In the Davis lab, she studied assembly of the autophagy initiation complex in yeast using pulse-labeling mass spec and cryo-EM, and developed computational methods to analyze ensembles of highly heterogeneous cryo-EM structures. Laurel was a recipient of the Hugh Hampton Young Graduate Fellowship.

Barrett Powell

Barrett completed his undergraduate training at Swarthmore College in Liliya Yatsunyk’s lab. Barrett works to develop new software tools to analyze single particle cryoEM datasets, including extensions to cryoDRGN, and has a growing interest in tomographic approaches (both experimental and computational) to understanding protein complexes involved in autophagy.