Fraser Lab Members

James was an undergraduate at McGill University, where he worked in the lab of Dr. Francois Fagotto on Xenopus developmental biology. During the summers, he returned to his hometown of Toronto and worked in Dr. Alan Davidson’s lab on TetR repressor biophysics and bacteriophage genomics.

He moved to California in 2005 to do his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UC Berkeley. There, he worked with Dr. Tom Alber creating biophysical methods to characterize protein side chain flexibility in high resolution X-ray electron density maps. They applied these techniques to study connections between conformational dynamics and enzymatic catalysis, showing that room temperature, but not standard cryogenic, X-ray data collection could reveal the structural basis for critical functional motions.

Near the end of his Ph.D., he was an EMBO Short-Term Fellow in Dr. Dan Tawfik’s lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Concurrently, he authored the problems and solutions manual for the physical chemistry textbook The Molecules of Life by Kuriyan, Konforti, and Wemmer.

In January 2011, James started his independent career as a QB3 at UCSF Fellow affiliated with the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology. In January 2013, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) with promotion to Associate Professor in 2016, and Full Professor in 2020. From 2022-2023, he was Vice Dean of Research for the UCSF School of Pharmacy. Since August 2023, he has been the Ernest L. Prien Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.

The lab is also part of the Macromolecular Structure Group at UCSF and BioXFEL, a Science and Technology Center established by the National Science Foundation. We maintain a deep connection with Macomolecular Crystallography Beamline 8.3.1., directed by Dr. James Holton, at the Advanced Light Source. James is also a Faculty Scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Associate Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Initiative.

In addition to all the exciting developments in the lab, James has long standing interests in teaching, baseball statistics, and juggling. James was also on the board of ASAPbio, a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery by making research outputs more accessible and reusable. The lab is committed to publishing our code, disseminating our datasets, posting manuscripts on preprint servers, and participating in open peer review. He is the co-creator of UCSF Talks, an aggregator of all the discovery science seminars at UCSF. His full conflicts of interest are available here.

Pooja received her Ph.D. from the University of Oulu in Finland. Her thesis focused on the structural characterization of mycobacterial membrane proteins using X-ray crystallography and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS).

In the Fraser lab, Pooja will utilize both X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM to study the drug complexes of tubulin and understand the molecular mechanism of resistance of anti-parasitic drugs.

Outside of lab, Pooja enjoys long walks and board games.

Priyanka did her Bachelor’s in Biochemistry at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi and her Master’s in Biochemistry at the University of Hyderabad. She completed her Ph.D. from Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science under Prof. Raghavan Vardarajan. Her Ph.D. work involved developing high-thoughput screens for measuring the mutational sensitivity of the toxin component of the toxin-antitoxin system of E. coli. She carried out deep mutational scans of the site-saturation mutagenesis library and single-site synonymous mutant library of the toxin gene in operonic context.

In the Fraser lab, Priyanka will perform deep mutational scanning on cancer-related proteins.

Outside the lab, Priyanka likes to dance, go on adventurous trips and explore the city.

Lena graduated in pharmacy at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Wuerzburg, Germany. During her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the LMU Munich, she focused on the molecular mechanism of chromatin remodeler recruitment in yeast.

In the Fraser lab, Lena is responsible for lab management as well as protein purifications and subsequent assays.

On the weekends you can find her hiking in the forest or mountains or going to the ballet.

Daphne graduated from UCLA with a degree in Biophysics. As an undergraduate, she studied the effects of chaotropes and kosmotropes on protein hydration layers under the guidance of Dr. Giovanni Zocchi.

She discovered her interest in structural biology when she spent a summer working under Dr. Kliment Verba at UCSF.

As a graduate student, Daphne is characterizing anti-CRISPR proteins in collaboration with the Bondy-Denomy Lab, as well as pursuing structural biology projects related to the phage-bacteria arms race.

Outside of lab, Daphne enjoys birding, reading, and playing with her cat Lilly.

Daphne is supported by a graduate fellowship from the UCSF Discovery Fellows Program.

Karson graduated from Walla Walla University with a degree in Bioengineering. During his undergraduate training, he worked on methods for high-throughput determination of antibody binding affinities under the mentorship of Dr. Timothy Whitehead at CU Boulder. Now, in the Fraser Lab, Karson aims to study protein conformational ensembles using the rich experimental data in structural biology in combination with generative modeling. Outside of lab, Karson enjoys biking, running, skiing, listening to jazz, and board games. He also drinks lots of tea and coffee.

Galen’s research interest lies in using structural biology to tackle problems in protein engineering and drug design. He earned his Ph.D. from the Australian National University, where he worked with Dr. Colin Jackson on the structure, function and evolution of insect enzymes that detoxify organophosphate nerve agents.

In the Fraser lab, first as a postdoc and now as a staff scientist, Galen is using recently developed methods in fragment-based drug discovery to guide the design of new inhibitors of an emerging anti-cancer therapeutic target and leading the high-throughput crystallography component of the QCRG AVIDD Program to discover new anti-virals.

Mohamad hails from Southern California where he attended UC Irvine to pursue his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Here, he researched fruit flies, bacteria and viruses. For his Ph.D. studies in Metabolic Biology, he trained under Dr. Marc Hellerstein at UC Berkeley on stable isotope methods and technology combined with mass spectrometry to investigate the fluxes of metabolic pathways in human health and disease.

In the Fraser lab, Mohamad is pursuing his postdoctoral studies where he will emerge in biophysics and structural biology to study ribosomal structures of M. tuberculosis using Cryo-EM.

For his recreational activities, Mohamad really enjoys going to concerts with his wife and playing guitar.

Jessica recently earned her Bachelor’s degree in chemical physics from UC Davis, where her research focused on building new theoretical models to describe intrinsically disordered proteins. She has also taken an interest in structural biology, and in the Fraser lab, she’s working on developing qFit. Beyond the lab, Jessica loves climbing, biking, and painting.

Daniel graduated from Stanford, where he worked on single-molecule biophysics with Dr. Steven Block.

In the Fraser lab, Daniel works to improve and expand the lab’s computational resources. He’s passionate about open science, open data, and open-source software.

Outside of lab, Daniel can usually be found running or playing board games.

Sonya graduated from Williams College with a degree in Chemistry. As an undergraduate, she studied antibiotic resistance mutations in beta-lactamase under Dr. Kathryn Hart.

In the Fraser lab, Sonya will be studying antibiotic resistance mechanisms.

Outside of the lab, she likes to listen to podcasts and stare into space.

Christian graduated from Arizona State University with degrees in Mathematics and Biochemistry, where he conducted research in the total synthesis of marine natural products with Dr. George Pettit. Afterwards, he attended the University of Michigan for his Ph.D. in Biophysics. In Dr. Randy Stockbridge’s lab, he studied the evolution and function of a number of membrane protein families.

Outside of lab, he enjoys books, music, being outdoors and/or on a bike, and drinking too much coffee.

Christian is supported by a Kirschstein NRSA (F32) fellowship from NIH/NIGMS.

Rishav graduated from St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata, India with a Masters degree in Biotechnology. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan, working with Dr. James Bardwell on studying molecular chaperones and intrinsically disordered proteins. In the Fraser lab, Rishav is interested in studying the conformational dynamics of Macrodomains. Outside of lab, Rishav enjoys traveling and can usually be found in art galleries and coffee shops.

Tushar recently graduated from Department of Chemistry, Universität Hamburg. His research project was carried out in the laboratories of Dr. Arwen Pearson (Center for Free-Electron Laser Science) and Dr. Trevor Forsyth (Institut Laue-Langevin). As a graduate student, he worked on two enzyme systems: E. coli copper amine oxidase (ECAO) and aspartate α-decarboxylase (ADC). In case of ECAO, he explored the effect of two non active site mutations whereas in case of ADC, he studied the effect of binding of a ligand on structure and dynamics of these enzymes. For this, he used a combination of neutron spectroscopy, X-ray/neutron diffraction and molecular dynamics simulations.

In the Fraser lab, Tushar will work on the structural basis of translation stalling using single particle cryo-EM. He will create a predictive model for interactions between nascent peptide motifs, small molecules, and the ribosome.

CJ graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Genetics, Genomics and Developmental Biology. As an undergraduate, he studied how somitogenesis is initiated in Xenopus laevis under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Harland.

Outside of lab, CJ enjoys biking, hiking, cooking, and music, and playing guitar.

Ziyue graduated from University of Maryland, College Park with a degree in Chemistry, where he worked on AI-augmented molecular dynamics simulations of crystal nucleations with Dr. Pratyush Tiwary. In the Fraser lab, Ziyue works on integrating machine learning models to predict responses to mutation in selection experiments. Outside of lab, Ziyue enjoys cooking and watching movies.

I graduated from Aix Marseille university in France with a Ph.D. degree in structural biochemistry. During my Ph.D., I studied, at the functional and structural levels, two component systems involved in the virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. After that, I joined the structural motility team at Curie Institute in Paris as a postdoctoral researcher. My project aimed to understand how does the human cardiac myosin interacts with other proteins and how dysfunction can lead to hypertrophic cardiomyopathies. ​

At UCSF, I will manage the X-ray Crystallography Core. I will also be involved in identifying new anti-viral compounds by X-ray crystallography.

Outside the lab, I enjoy listening to music, shopping, hiking, and discovering new places around the world.