The Chemical and Structural Biology (CSB) Training Program at UC Irvine currently supports five predoctoral fellows throughout the School of Physical Sciences and the Ayala School of Biological Sciences. Learn more about each of the current CSB fellows below.
Click here for a list of CSB predoctoral fellows that have successfully defended their PhD thesis.
Jessica Kelz (Martin Lab; CSB 2017)
B.S. Chemistry, United States Naval Academy, 2008
Jessica Kelz is a member of the Martin lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB fellow in 2017. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD in 2008. As an undergraduate, she worked at the National Institutes of Health under Dr. Sriram Subramaniam utilizing dual-beam scanning electron microscopy to image cells and reconstruct 3D images to determine subcellular structural differences in various stages of melanoma. Currently her research is in designing new solid-state NMR instrumentation with applications to protein-membrane interactions. The primary focus is building a triple-resonance (1H/2H/13C) switched angle spinning (SAS) probe to use both isotropic spectra by magic angle spinning (MAS) for structure determination and a second angle to reintroduce anisotropic information to determine local order and site-specific dynamics.
Craig Gutierrez (Huang Lab; CSB 2016)
B.S. Biology, California State University, Fullerton, 2010
Craig Gutierrez is a member of Huang lab in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and was named a CSB fellow in 2016. He received his B.S. in Biology from the California Sate University, Fullerton in 2010. His current research focuses on utilizing collision-induced dissociation (CID) cleavable protein cross-linkers in combination with MSn Mass Spectrometry to both investigate dynamic structures of large protein complexes and identify protein-protein interactions. Specifically, the Huang lab research focuses on investigating the protein complexes related to the Ubiquitin Proteasome System.
Christine Miller (Green Lab; CSB 2017)
B.A. Chemistry, Texas A&M University, 2011
Christine Miller is a member of the Green lab in the Department of Chemistry and was named a CSB Fellow in 2017. She received her B.A. in Chemistry in 2011 from Texas A&M University, where her undergraduate research at the USDA Agricultural Research Services Center focused on cotton pathology. She then joined the Oak Crest Institute of Science in Monrovia, CA to develop sustained-release drug delivery systems, subdermal implants and intravaginal rings, for HIV prevention. Her current research aims to elucidate the mechanism of C-H bond amination by native and engineered P450 enzymes through trapping and subsequent characterization of reaction intermediates via experimental techniques such as stopped-flow UV-Vis absorption, resonance Raman, electron paramagnetic resonance, Mössbauer, and X-ray absorption spectroscopies in conjunction with DFT calculations.
Kalistyn Burley (Goulding & Mobley Labs; CSB 2017)
B.A. Biomedical Engineering, Dartmouth College, 2009
Kalistyn Burley is a joint member of the Golding and Mobley labs in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and was named a CSB fellow in 2017. She received her B.A. in Biomedical Engineering from Dartmouth College in 2009 and later held research positions at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, and BioMarin Pharmaceuticals in Novato, CA. Kalli is interested in the application and development of computational methods for drug discovery and design. She currently is studying the structure of TB enzymes as well as developing enhanced sampling methods for molecular simulations.
Kelly Rotstan (Luptak Lab; CSB 2017)
B.S. Biology, University of Puget Sound, 2014