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Current Lab Members
Katya Heldwein, PhD
Principal Investigator
Katya received her PhD from Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, OR where she studied ligand recognition by bacterial transcription regulators using x-ray crystallography in the laboratory of Richard Brennan. She then did her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Stephen Harrison where she initially worked on clathrin adaptor complexes and later delved into herpesvirus cell entry. She opened her own laboratory at Tufts University School of Medicine in the Fall of 2006.
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Nathalie Lavoie
PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Nathalie received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston College and a Masters in Spatial Analysis for Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She is using quantitative fluorescence and cryo-electron microscopy to study how the nuclear egress coat (NEC) assembles in contact with the capsid.
Mohammad Karimian Shamsabadi, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Mohammad earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2024. His research focused on the structural mechanisms by which HIV-1 Nef antagonizes SERINC, CD4, and MHC-I, and he developed high-throughput screening assays to identify inhibitors of Nef. He previously obtained his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran. Currently, Mohammad’s work investigates the structural basis of the interaction between HCMV glycoprotein B in its prefusion state and antibodies.
Bing Dai
PhD Student, CMDB Program
Bing received a Bachelors in Medicinal Chemistry from China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing, China and a Masters Pharmacology and Drug Development from Tufts. His project focuses on identifying host proteins that facilitate HSV nuclear egress and determining the mechanisms by which they do so.
Maria K. McClave
PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Maria received her BA in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California Berkeley. Her current project focuses on characterizing the structure of the HCMV fusogen, gB, and its interactions with new and existing neutralizing antibodies through electron microscopy and the development of HCMV-specific functional assays.
Ariana Calderon-Zavala
PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Ariana received her Bachelors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. She completed her post-baccalaureate in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology at Tufts University GSBS in Boston, MA. Her project focuses on the role of the nuclear egress complex in HSV-1 and related gamma-herpesviruses.
Leah (Chanyoung) Lee
PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Leah (Chanyoung) earned her bachelors in Food Science and her masters in Food Microbiology from Seoul National University. She is working on Team Entry with a focus on HCMV gB.
Adrian Sperl
PhD Student, GMCB
Adrian received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering/Biochemistry from Northeastern University. His research focuses on host factors involved in nuclear egress
Gonzo Gonzalez Del Pino, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Gonzo received his PhD and Master's degrees in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 2020, where he studied the structure and regulation of BRAF and MEK1, two kinases central to the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. He graduated from the University of Miami with Bachelor's degrees in French and Biochemistry. His current work focuses on developing a pipeline using a synthetic nanobody library to select chaperones for X-ray crystallography and cryoelectron microscopy of the HSV-1 fusogen, gB, in its prefusion and intermediate conformations.
Brian Cieslewicz
PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Brian received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University. His project focuses on characterizing pre- and post-fusion conformations of the viral fusogen gB across various human herpesviruses.
Hunter Russell
PhD Student, GMCB
Hunter received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Currently, his project focuses on the entry of Alphaherpesviruses, namely HSV-1 and HSV-2. The main goal of the project is characterizing the structure and interactions of the gD-gHgL complex, using a mAb to help stabilize the complex.
Alicia de Pablos Fernandez
Visiting Student
Alicia is studying for a Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology at Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, Spain. Her current research focuses on visualizing KSHV nuclear egress in reactivated cells.
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