November 2011:
Kejia is a new dad! Hi son Jason was born on November 5. Congratulations and all the best!
May 2009:
The NIH (NCI) awards a 5-year R01 grant for $1,800,000 to the lab.
April 2009:
Welcome to three new undergraduate students who will participate in our effort to synthesize RNA-binding scaffolds. Maria Alvarado will join Emily and Bao Ho as well as Cody Higginson, a recipient of an Amgen Scholar fellowship, will both work with Sanjay.
February 2009:
Maia Carnevali wins a scholarship to attend the Medicinal Chemistry Intensive Program at the UCSD Extension in March. Congratulations!
October 2008:
Kevin Rynearson joins the lab as a 1st year graduate student. Welcome also to Tina Tran who is working as an undergraduate volunteer.
July 2008:
Kevin Rynearson of the incoming class of graduate students joins the lab as a volunteer to work with Sanjay Dutta over the summer. Welcome to him and also to Andrea Potocny, a new undergraduate lab member who will do synthetic chemistry with Emily. Both Andrea and Kevin participate in our efforts to synthesize novel RNA-binding scaffolds.
May 2008:
Maia Carnevali wins a travel award of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry to present her work at the ACS Fall Meeting in Philadelphia. Congratulations!
April 2008:
Welcome to Wayne Chen who joined the lab as an undergraduate to participate in the synthesis of RNA-binding scaffolds with Sanjay Dutta.
January 2008:
Welcome to Uyen Tran, a new undergraduate lab member who will work with Jerod Parsons on fluorescence assays for the study of RNA-ligand interactions.
November 2007:
Welcome to new undergraduate lab members!
Chan Ho and Sarah Trosin are new additions to the Biochemistry & Crystallography lab to do research on RNA crystallization.
Thao Le and Cathy Thach join the Synthesis lab to work with Maia Carnevali and Emily Satkiewicz on new RNA-binding scaffolds.
Welcome to new lab members - and one Goodbye!
Margo Clayton is the new Administrative Assistant. Her office is located in PacHall 4140.
Sanjay Dutta joins the lab as a postdoc from the University of Missouri - Columbia. For his PhD thesis at UMC Sanjay worked in Kent Gates's lab on bioorganic chemistry of DNA damaging natural products.
Laura Walker will work in the lab for a Summer Rotation. Laura did her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Paola Castaldi leaves the lab to join the Center for Chemical Methodology and Library Development at Boston University. All the best for her future carreer!
June 2007:
Yi-Hsing Weng graduates from the UCSD Masters Program. Congratulations!
May 2007:
Ernest Lam wins the Urey Award for Undergraduate Research of the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department for his work characterizing structure and ligand interaction of an mRNA regulatory motif. Congratulations!
Jennifer Johnson and Tracey Pham win the Kalypsys Poster Award at the Undergraduate Research Symposium of the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department for their poster titled "Characterizing an RNA Nanosquare". Congratulations!
April 2007:
The NIH (NIAID) awards a 5-year R01 grant for $1,862,000 to the lab.
Sergey Dibrov and Jerod Parsons are on the lab's first trip to the synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, to collect diffraction data on heavy atom labelled RNA crystals.
July 2009:
Jerod's work on the mechanism of an HCV inhibitor is accepted for publication in Nature Chemical Biology. Congratulations!
Welcome to Sara Selvaraj who joins as a high school student intern for the summer.
September 2009:
Welcome to Jessica Bruystens and Kejia Ding of the incoming class of graduate students who do rotations in the lab.
Chemical & Engineering News writes about our work on HCV inhibitors and UCSD publishes a news release on our NCB paper.
October 2009:
Our paper on the mechanism of an HCV inhibitor appears in the November issue of Nature Chemical Biology, accompanied by a News and Views article by Begley and Varani.
Cody Higginson has been awarded a 2009 Dean's Undergraduate Award for Excellence. Congratulations!
Welcome to Kiet Tran, an undergraduate student, who will work with Kevin on method development for the synthesis of RNA-binding ligands.
December 2009:
Sanjay's discovery of a novel ring expansion rearrangement to make substituted 1,3-diazepanes is accepted for publication in Organic Letters. Congratulations!
January 2010:
Welcome to two new graduate and four undergraduate students in the lab!
Kejia Ding, an organic student, and Nicholas Brunn, a biochemist, have decided to work on their thesis in our group. Phung Nong and Brian Huynh join as undergrad volunteers in the biochemistry lab. On the organic synthesis side, Hugh Nguyen will participate in Maia's research and Amity Li is a new addition to Emily's team.
A good start to everyone in 2010!
February 2010:
Jerod's and Sergey's work on the structure and ligand binding of an RNA model for a ribosomal drug target has been accepted for publication in Nucleic Acids Research. Congratulations!
March 2010:
Emily Satkiewicz has been awarded a Socrates Fellowship for the 2010-2011 academic year. Bao Ho has been selected for an Amgen Scholarship.
Congratulations to both!
May 2010:
Jerod Parsons, the first PhD student to graduate from the lab, has defended his thesis on May 13. Congratulations, Jerod!
Cody Higginson has been awarded the 2010 J.E. Mayer Award for Undergraduate Research. Congratulations!
Maia's work on a new series of RNA-binding compounds that target the HCV IRES has been accepted for publication in ChemBioChem. Congratulations!
October 2010:
Welcome to Jesus Moreno, an undergraduate researcher who will work with Maia on the synthesis of RNA-binding ligands!
November 2010:
Welcome to Melody Kao and Chris Gabriel, two new undergraduate volunteers! Melody will join Nick in the biochemistry lab and Chris will participate in Kevin's synthesis research.
August 2010:
Welcome to Alexa Lean who will join as undergrad volunteer in the biochemistry lab!
December 2010:
Goodbye and all the best for the future to Sanjay Dutta who is leaving the group after 3 1/2 years to move on to a postdoc position at TSRI.
And Welcome to Carrie Tan, a new undergraduate who will work with Kejia on the synthesis of new RNA binders.
March 2011:
Our work on the crystal structure and programmed self-assembly of an RNA nanosquare has been accepted for publication in PNAS.
Thomas has been granted promotion to Associate Professor with tenure, effective July 2011.
April 2011:
UCSD publishes a news release on our PNAS paper on the RNA nanosquare.
Welcome to Vahagn Antonyan, an undergraduate researcher who will work with Thomas on the nanosquare project.
June 2011:
Maia Carnevali, the second PhD student to graduate from the lab, has defended her thesis on June 20. Congratulations, Maia!
August 2011:
Emily is moving to Upstate NY to start her new position as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the Chemistry Department of Ithaca College. Congratulations, Emily!
September 2011:
Rayya Samawi and Brian Charette, two new undergraduate researchers, join Kevin's gang of RNA ligand synthesizers. Welcome!
October 2011:
Emily Satkiewicz, the third PhD student to graduate from the lab, has defended her thesis on October 20. Congratulations, Emily!
December 2011:
Mark Boerneke is joining our lab as a new graduate student. Mark did his undergraduate studies at Point Loma Nazarene and will start working on a new target in the HCV IRES RNA. Welcome!
January 2012:
Welcome to Shu Zhou, a new postdoc, and Zhao Wu an undergraduate student who will work with Kejia on RNA ligand synthesis. Shu, who received her PhD on work on RNA-ligand recognition in the Hines group at Ohio University, will use her expertise in the RNA field to participate in our HCV IRES project.
Our lab picks up some serious prep and analytical HPLC equipment from Pfizer ... for a song. Thanks to all lab members who helped with unloading the truck - and especially to Kevin & Sergey who did the heavy lifting.
October 2012:
Nick's paper on the thymidylate synthase mRNA target has been accepted by ChemBioChem. Congratulations!
Rayya Samawi and Nancy Tran, new graduate students in the Masters program, join the lab to work on ligand synthesis (Rayya) and crystallography (Nancy). Welcome!
July - September 2012:
Julie Shen, Kathleen Sered, Christy Ho, Kathrina Kettler, Jiayi Zhang and Annie Wang are new undergraduate researchers to join the lab this summer. Welcome everyone!
June 2012:
Kejia Ding wins a travel award of the UCSD Chemistry Department to present his work at the ACS Fall Meeting in Philadelphia. Congratulations!
March 2012:
UCSD publishes a news release on our PNAS paper on the HCV IRES RNA - translation inhibitor complex. Check out the YouTube video starring Sergey vs. ze Crystals plus some awesome liquid N2 shots...
Also, our PNAS paper is already featured at the Faculty of 1000 website with an Exceptional rating.
February 2012:
Our manuscript disclosing the crystal structure of an RNA target in the HCV IRES bound to a viral translation inhibitor has been accepted for publication in PNAS.
Welcome to Lee Wang, a JDP graduate student from the Bergdahl group at SDSU who will collaborate with our lab on the synthesis of RNA-targeting peptides.
