Katherine Susa

Principal Investigator/Sandler Fellow

Katherine joined UCSF as a Sandler Fellow in February 2023 in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. She graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Chemistry and received her PhD in Chemical Biology from Harvard University in 2022. She studied the structure and dynamics of the B cell co-receptor complex as a co-mentored graduate student with Andrew Kruse and Steve Blacklow.

Kevin Delgado-Cunningham

Biophysics graduate student (co-mentored with Klim Verba)

Kevin got his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduating he spent two years as a technician in Rebecca DuBois’ group at UCSC, where he worked on the structural biology underlying cell entry by human astroviruses.

Kevin Alexander Estrada Alamo

Biophysics graduate student (co-mentored with Tanja Kortemme)

Kevin graduated from Western Washington University with a B.S. in Biochemistry. During undergrad, they studied the structural constraints of ligand specificity of PDZ and SH2 domains in Jeanine Amacher’s lab at Western, and how ligands are recognized and activate integrins in Melody Campbell’s lab at Fred Hutch. Now in their Ph.D., Kevin is using protein design to probe how clustering behaviors of the BCR and other co-receptors affect BCR signaling. Kevin’s hobbies are designing clothes and jewelry.

Payal Pratap

Specialist

Payal graduated from UC Davis as a double major in Genetics and Psychology. She then worked in the biotech industry for a few years, developing novel, bi-specific antibodies against multiple myeloma, which inspired her to attend graduate school. She received her PhD in Structural Immunology from the Scripps Research Institute under the mentorship of Andrew Ward, where she focused on structure-guided HIV vaccine design and development and used cryo-EM to elucidate polyclonal antibody responses from recombinant HIV protein immunizations in rhesus macaques.

Luis Oliva

Tetrad graduate student (co-mentored with Jim Wells)

Luis earned his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As an undergraduate, he worked with the United States Geological Survey studying mineral precipitation patterns, where he became interested in the role of proteins in biomineralization. He earned his M.S. as an ACS Bridge Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, working with Elizabeth A. Komives and Lisa M. Jones to apply HDX-MS and FPOP-MS in studying how disordered regions of the NFκB-IκBα complex shape conformational ensembles and activity. Now in his Ph.D., Luis is using structural and proteomic approaches to study and modulate immune checkpoints in B cells