Since 2014, the Chemical and Structural Biology (CSB) Training Program at UC Irvine has provided predoctoral fellowships to support some of the most promising young scientists in chemical and structural biology across both the Ayala School of Biological Sciences and the School of Physical Sciences. We are proud to highlight below the the predoctoral CSB fellows who have defended their Ph.D. thesis successfully since joining the CSB Training Program.
Scott Hollingsworth, Ph.D. (Poulos Lab; CSB 2014-2016)
B.S. Biochemistry and Biophysics, Oregon State University, 2010
Ph.D. Biological Sciences, University of California Irvine, 2016
Dr. Scott Hollingsworth worked under Dr. Thomas L. Poulos in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry as a graduate student at UCI. He received the Francisco J. Ayala Graduate Fellowship in 2011 during his first year at UCI, was appointed as a predoctoral cancer biology fellow in 2013-2014 and was appointed as a predoctoral CSB fellow from 2014-2016. During his graduate career at UCI, he studied a number of different systems including the interactions between heme proteins and their redox partner proteins, water behavior on self-assembled monolayers as well as a number of other systems using a combination of experimental and computational methods. Following his defense, Dr. Hollingsworth joined the Dror Lab at Stanford University as a Postdoctoral Scholar and received a Biomedical Informatics postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford.
Krysten Jones, Ph.D. (Prescher Lab; CSB 2014-2017)
B.S., Biotechnology, Elizabethtown College
Ph.D. Biological Sciences, University of California Irvine, 2017
Dr. Krysten Jones worked under Dr. Jen Prescher in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry as a graduate student at UCI. Her graduate research involved engineering new luciferase tools for bioluminescence imaging towards visualizing immune cell function, multi-cellular networks, and host-pathogen dynamics. This work comprised two main goals: (1) generating novel luciferase-luciferin pairs via directed evolution and (2) engineering contact-dependent bioluminescent probes to report on cellular communication. Upon graduating from UCI, Dr. Jones joined the lab of Dr. Jared Lewis at the University of Chicago as a postdoctoral researcher.
Eric Novitsky (Rychnovsky Lab; CSB 2014)
B.S. Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2012
Eric Novitsky is a member of Rychnovsky lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB fellow in 2014. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2012. As an undergraduate, he synthesized DNA base pair analogs and appended them to polymers to study supramolecular interactions. Currently his research focuses on designing and synthesizing collision-induced dissociation-cleavable protein cross-linkers.
Patrick Salveson (Nowick Lab; CSB 2015)
B.S. Chemical Biology, University of California Berkeley, 2013
Patrick Salveson is a member of the Nowick Lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB fellow in 2015. Previously at UC Irvine he received the Chancellor’s Fellowship in 2013. Patrick’s research in the Nowick lab focuses on determining the high-resolution structure of peptides derived from amyloidogenic proteins with the goal of understanding the structures of protein oligomers that mediate a host of neurodegenerative diseases.
Jeffrey O’Brien (Shea Lab; CSB 2015)
B.A. Biochemistry, University of San Diego, 2012
Jeffrey O’Brien is a member of Shea lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB fellow in 2015. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of San Diego in 2012. As an undergraduate he synthesized hybrid materials in the laboratory of Professor Peter Iovine. Currently his research focuses on synthesizing and evaluating synthetic nanoparticle hydrogels for toxin sequestration and protein purification.
Jake Milligan (Tsai Lab; CSB 2016)
B.S. Chemistry, Point Loma Nazarene University, 2013
Jake Milligan is a member of Sheryl Tsai’s lab in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. Before entering graduate school, he received a B.S. in Chemistry at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. His undergraduate research in the lab of Dale Shellhamer focused on the mechanism and kinetics of a crucial step in the synthesis of substituted beta-lactam antibiotics. His current research in the Tsai lab focuses on the structural biology of protein-protein and protein-substrate interactions in microbial metabolism, specifically the biosynthesis of fatty acids and polyketide natural products.
Tyler Albin (Esser-Kahn Lab; CSB 2016)
B.S. Chemistry, Western Washington University, 2014
Tyler Albin is a graduate student in the Esser-Kahn lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB fellow in 2016. Previously at UC Irvine he received the Chancellor’s Fellowship in Chemistry in 2014. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Western Washington University in 2014. As an undergraduate in the Amanda Murphy Lab, he designed conducting polymer-silk peptide conjugates to make self-assembled, electrically conductive hydrogels. Currently his research focuses on developing novel immunostimulants through the conjugation of Toll-like receptor agonists to improve the efficacy of vaccines.