P.I. & Sandler Faculty Fellow

margaux.pinney [at] ucsf.edu

Margaux grew up in a small town outside of Seattle, Washington. She graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. in Biochemistry and Chemistry. Then Margaux moved to the Bay Area to do her Ph.D. with Daniel Herschlag at Stanford University, where she studied the molecular mechanisms of enzyme function and evolution. She then joined the labs of Polly Fordyce and Gavin Sherlock as a postdoc to learn and adapt high-throughput in vitro and in vivo methods. In her spare time, Margaux reads a lot of science fiction, cooks complicated recipes, consumes too much television, runs outdoors and cycles indoors.

Masters Student

SFSU Biomedical Science–Stem Cell Science

jacob.posner [at] ucsf.edu

Jacob was born in Palo Alto and grew up in the old colonial town of Morelia, Mexico. He came back to the US to study biochemistry, a science he was inspired to pursue after looking through a microscope at an onion cell in seventh grade. Prior to joining us at UCSF he worked in the production and purification of novel monoclonal antibodies at Bayer, Genentech, Denali Theraputics, and Thermo Fisher. He’s an avid reader, who enjoys concerts, running, climbing, and movies.

Ph.D. Candidate

Biophysics

Co-mentored by Mike Keiser

duncan.muir [at] ucsf.edu

Duncan has moved back and forth between New England and California throughout his life. He completed his B.S. in Data Science and Biochemistry at Northeastern University. Before starting graduate school, Duncan worked in the Structural Biology group at Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he supported medicinal chemistry efforts through crystallographic fragment screening and developed tools to store and track crystallographic data. Outside of school, Duncan can be found bouldering indoors and outdoors, enjoying local restaurants, or re-watching Lord of the Rings for the millionth time.

Ph.D. Candidate

Biophysics

Co-mentored by Tanja Kortemme

jon.zhang [at] ucsf.edu

Jon was born and raised in the South Bay. For his undergraduate studies, he would move to Seattle to pursue a degree in Biochemistry at the University of Washington. There, he worked on engineering non-heme iron oxygenases with novel C-H functionalization activity and developed a passion for protein design. When he’s not in lab, Jon can be found in the gym, walking around the Mission Bay neighborhood, eating a burger at Spark, or playing Fortnite with his fellow biophysics classmates.

Ph.D. Student

Bioengineering

Co-mentored by Tanja Kortemme

alexjli [at] berkeley.edu

Alex was born and raised north of the Twin Cities, Minnesota. He completed his S.B. in Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: there, he split his time between the Swager Lab, where he worked on the synthesis of extended π-conjugated chiral helices, and the Keating Lab, where he worked on building machine learning models for protein design. Outside of the lab, you might find him messing around with a microphone, piano, or guitar, probably while sipping on boba or coffee.

Ph.D. Student

Biophysics

Co-mentored by Bill DeGrado

Giovanni.Aviles [at] ucsf.edu

Giovanni was born and raised in the Bay Area, with a few years spent enjoying the sunny weather in SoCal for high school. He moved back up to the Bay Area to pursue a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to starting graduate school, he worked in Martin Kampmann’s lab at UCSF studying the signaling pathway by which cells communicate mitochondrial stress to the cytosol and nucleus. Outside of the lab, Giovanni can be found top roping at a nearby climbing gym, hanging out at Dolores Park, or trying to read papers while heavily caffeinated.

Ph.D. Student

Biophysics

Co-mentored by Bill DeGrado

Nicholas.Freitas [at] ucsf.edu

Nicholas grew up in central Massachusetts, and called Boston his home during his undergraduate years at MIT. There he studied computer science and molecular biology, and worked on computational drug discovery at a number of internships. At the Pinney Lab, he’s excited to use high-throughput experiments to obtain data on enzyme kinetics, which he’ll use as ground truth benchmarks while he develops computational tools for protein design.

While he misses the snow back home, Nicholas has been enjoying the many beautiful campsites and parks not far from San Francisco.

Ph.D. Student

Biophysics

Angelica.Lam [at] ucsf.edu

Angelica was born and raised in San Francisco and moved across the Bay Bridge to study Chemical Biology at UC Berkeley. As an undergrad, she ran Monte Carlo simulations of transcriptional activation domains for the Staller lab to understand how their sequence features affect their activity. Outside of the lab, you can find her enjoying cute cat videos and pretending to live a cottage-core lifestyle in Stardew Valley.

Masters Student

UC Berkeley/UCSF Master of Translational Medicine

william.vo [at] ucsf.edu

William was born and raised in the Bay Area. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.S. in Biochemistry. During this time, he did research in the Di Carlo lab, leveraging a core-shell microparticle platform for directed protein evolution of calcium biosensors. Outside of the lab, William competes on the USA Wushu Team and enjoys spending time with family and friends.

Specialist & Lab Manager

Ruensern.Tan [at] ucsf.edu

Ruensern is a Bay Area native growing up in Mountain View. He obtained his B.S. in Chemical Biology from UC Berkeley, and Master in Biotechnology from SJSU. He then obtained his PhD from UC Davis with Rick McKenney where he applied biochemistry and single-molecule fluorescence to study the mechanism in which cooperative association of microtubule associated proteins confers novel functions. He then joined Ahmet Yildiz at UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow to study the biomechanical properties of ciliary bending. Most recently, he was a group leader at Eikon Therapeutics where he optimized their cell-based single-molecule imaging platform for high-throughput drug screening. When not working his second job as a father/ husband, Ruensern likes to swim, eat, and play video games.

Junior Specialist

Blair.Caccam [at] ucsf.edu

Chemistry Ph.D. Student

Stanford

dusiyuan [at] stanford.edu

Siyuan grew up in Shanghai, China and came to the U.S. for undergraduate studies. She majored in Chemistry and French at Grinnell College and studied flavin enzymes with Professor Elizabeth Trimmer. Before entering graduate school, she was a summer student and research assistant at Stanford, where she studied hydrogen bonds and enzyme conformational dynamics under the mentorship of Daniel Herschlag and Margaux Pinney. She has now joined the Herschlag lab as a graduate student, where she will continue her research in protein functions and mechanisms combining bioinformatic approaches with high-throughput experiments. Outside of lab, she does agility and disc training with her dog, Peanut, and she enjoys reading poetry.

Undergraduate Researcher and SRTP Student

(Summer 2022)

Currently: Ph.D. Student @ UC Davis

Undergraduate Researcher

(Summer 2022)

Currently: Junior Specialist, Al-Sady Lab @ UCSF

Undergraduate Researcher

(Summer 2023)

Currently: Undergraduate @ UCR

Junior Specialist

(2022-2024)

Currently: UCSF Biophysics Graduate Student

PhD Student

(Graduated Summer 2024)

Currently: BigHat Biosciences