Our Team
Senior Staff
Katherine Donovan
Lead Scientist Longwood Center, LC-3118 Email: kdonovan (at) crystal.harvard.edu Katherine received her PhD in protein biochemistry in the lab of Prof. Renwick Dobson at the University of Canterbury, NZ. Her research interests are focused on exploring E3 ligase mechanism and methods of manipulation for targeted protein degradation. She set up and optimized a high throughput chemo-proteomics pipeline for the identification of degradation targets in the Fischer Lab as well as in the Center for Protein Degradation. Katherine continues to work on several projects related to ligase biology and protein degradation while also leading the proteomics operation in the Fischer Lab. |
Radoslaw Nowak
Senior Scientist Longwood Center, LC-4302 Email: nowak (at) crystal.harvard.edu Radek received his DPhil from University of Oxford based on his work to develop inhibitors for histone lysine demethylases in the group of Prof. Udo Oppermann. His research interests revolve around transforming structural, biophysical, biochemical and proteomic insights surrounding PROTACs and other degrader molecules into a predictive framework to accelerate degrader discovery and validation. Radek holds a joint appointment as a Group Leader at the newly formed Center for Protein Degradation at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. |
Yuan Xiong
Scientist II Longwood Center, LC-2111B Email: yuan_xiong (at) dfci.harvard.edu Yuan received her B.S. in Chemistry from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Boston University. She then joined the lab of Prof. Nathanael Gray at Dana Farber Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow and worked on targeting KRas and other targets with small molecule inhibitors and degraders. Her research interests include developing small molecule degraders as chemical probes for studying biology questions and as potential therapeutics. |
Ryan Lumpkin
Scientist II Longwood Center, LC-2113C Email: rlumpkin (at) crystal.harvard.edu Ryan Lumpkin graduated with a BS in Chemistry in 2014 from the University of Denver and then received his PhD in Chemistry in 2019 from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied the mechanisms of Ubiquitin and Ubiquitin-like Post-Translational Modifications in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Komives. |
Postdoctoral Fellows
Sarah Dixon-Clarke
Postdoc Longwood Center, LC-2110H Email: sdixon (at) crystal.harvard.edu Sarah obtained her BSc in Biochemistry, from the University of St Andrews. She subsequently undertook a PhD at the University of Oxford, in the Structural Genomics Consortium, in Dr Alex Bullock’s group. Sarah’s PhD looked to gain insights into the structural and regulatory mechanisms of two underexplored CDK family subgroups and investigate new opportunities for cancer drug development. |
Hong Yue
Postdoc Longwood Center, LC-2110G Email: hyue (at) crystal.harvard.edu Hong received her PhD in Organic Chemistry at Peking University, where she focused on the discovery of agonist and antagonist small molecules to regulate the Wnt pathway. Hong joined Dr. Marc Vidal's group at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a postdoc where she was investigating the fragment-fragment interaction network for yeast HDAC complex and developed robust systematical and HTS platform for functional genetics studies through the integration of NGS technology. |
Shourya Sonkar Roy Burman
Postdoc Longwood Center, LC-2111D Email: ssroyburman (at) crystal.harvard.edu Shourya obtained his bachelor's degree in Bioengineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur followed by a Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. During his Ph.D. in Prof. Jeffrey Gray's group, he developed computational methods to dock flexible proteins and symmetric proteins in the Rosetta modeling suite. |
Jialin Sun
Postdoc Longwood Center Email: jisun (at) crystal.harvard.edu Jialin graduated from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, with a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences. She subsequently obtained her Ph.D at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB, A*STAR) under the supervision of Professor Wanjin Hong and Nanyang Technological University under the supervision of Professor Yonggui Gao, specializing in structural biology. During her graduate studies, Jialin investigated a novel protein in yeast that regulates polarity establishment and successfully solved the structure to unveil its molecular mechanism. |
Franziska Wachter
Postdoc Longwood Center, LC-2110J Email: Franziska_Wachter (at) DFCI.HARVARD.EDU Franziska is currently an Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an Attending-Physician in the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Division at DFCI | BCH. Franziska focuses on novel therapeutic approaches for difficult to treat myeloid malignancies. Her graduate studies in Irmela Jeremia’s laboratory (LMU/Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany) focused on mechanisms of chemoresistance and apoptosis signaling. Her postdoctoral training in Loren Walensky's laboratory at DFCI was dedicated to BCL-2 family protein biology. She identified and characterized BAX activators discovered in a NMR-based fragment screen and studied new inhibitory mechanism of the apoptotic effector protein BAX. She also validated the on-target mechanism of a p53 reactivating stapled peptide drug that is currently in clinical trials. Franziska received an M.D. from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany, completed residency training in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital | Boston Medical Center and Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant Fellowship at DFCI | Boston Children’s Hospital. Franziska utilizes her unique training in medicine, biochemistry, and structural biology to work at the innovative forefront of pediatric oncology and drug development |
Jiazhi Li
Postdoc Email: jili (at) crystal.harvard.edu Jiazhi received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. During her doctoral program, Jiazhi investigated the structural and mechanistic basis of the CRISPR-Cas system. She is currently a research fellow in Hematology/Oncology and Cancer Biology at BCH/DFCI, and focuses on the research of posttranscriptional gene regulation mechanisms. |
Graduate Students
Cyrus Jin
BBS Graduate Student Longwood Center, LC-2111D Email: cyrusjin (at) g.harvard.edu Cyrus graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. His research at UCLA was conducted under Professor Steven Clarke on regulation of arginine methyltransferases. |
Michelle Ma
MCO Graduate Student Longwood Center, LC-2111E Email: michellema (at) crystal.harvard.edu Michelle graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in Molecular and Cell Biology. Michelle's undergraduate thesis, conducted under the guidance of Professor Jeremy Thorner, was focused on analyzing putative substrates of a protein kinase in yeast that controls plasma membrane lipid homeostasis. |
Katrina Warner
BBS Graduate Student Longwood Center, LC-2111D Email: kwarner (at) crystal.harvard.edu Katrina graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Mathematics. Her undergraduate thesis, conducted in the lab of Prof. Dustin Maly, was focused on developing compound sensitive tools for studying cell signaling processes. Her undergraduate thesis, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Jarod Alper, was an exposition exploring MCMC-sampling algorithms in the context of algebraic geometry. Following graduation, Katrina spent time at Lyell Immunopharma, learning the intersection of protein design and CAR T-cell engineering. |
Binita Shah
BBS Graduate Student Longwood Center, LC-2111C Email: binitashah (at) crystal.harvard.edu Binita graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology. Her undergraduate thesis was conducted under Professor Joachim Frank investigating structural intermediates of bacterial translation using cryo-electron microscopy. She also spent a year at Schrödinger Inc. learning about the intersection of structural biology and drug discovery. |
Jiho Park
BBS Graduate Student Longwood Center, LC-2110H Email: jpark (at) crystal.harvard.edu Jiho graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. His previous research experiences focused on computational drug discovery and organic synthesis. He also spent two years working as a data scientist at nference before starting graduate school. |
Technical Staff
Jeonghyeon Kim
Research Technician Longwood Center, LC-2111C Email: jkim (at) crystal.harvard.edu Jeonghyeon graduated summa cum laude from Seoul National University with Pharm.D in pharmacy. His undergraduate thesis was focused on identifying and characterizing a lncRNA which is over-expressed in mouse primary hepatocytes under fasting condition. |
Matthew McNulty
Research Technician Longwood Center, LC-2111E Email: mmcnulty (at) crystal.harvard.edu Matt graduated magna cum laude from Hobart and William Smith Colleges with a B.S. in Biology. He conducted undergraduate research under the direction of Professor Patricia Mowery, on bacterial chemotaxis-like proteins and a class of small-molecule anticancer agents. |
Chi-Lin Hsu
Research Technician Longwood Center, LC-2111E Email: chsu (at) crystal.harvard.edu Chi-Lin received her M.Sc. in Brain and Mind Sciences at National Taiwan University, where she focused on the functions of imprinted genes in the mouse brain under the supervision of Prof. Hsien-Sung Huang. She also spent two years working as a research technician in Prof. Feng-Chiao Tsai’s lab to explore the mechanisms of cell migration. |
Junior Scientists
Chelsea Shu
Rosetta Postbac Student Longwood Center, LC-2111D Email: cshu (at) crystal.harvard.edu Chelsea graduated cum laude with honors from the University of Washington with a B.S. in Biochemistry and minors in Global Health and Chemistry. Her undergraduate thesis, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Neil King, focused on optimizing self-assembling protein nanoparticles for immunological applications. |