The CBI Training Program Welcomes New Faculty Mentors!

The Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program is excited to welcome six new faculty mentors this year, bringing fresh expertise across chemical biology, structural biology, and neuroscience to our training community.

Mingxia Gu (Medicine) uses patient-specific stem cell models and bioengineering to study how blood vessels contribute to organ development and disease, developing regenerative therapies for congenital heart and lung defects.

Kalli Kappel (Chemistry & Biochemistry) integrates high-throughput experiments and computation to decode how RNA and protein sequences determine structure, organization, and function in cells.

Avi Samelson (Neurology; Biological Chemistry) studies how brain cells regulate protein aggregation, aiming to uncover new therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS.

Hannah Shafaat (Chemistry & Biochemistry) combines spectroscopy, theory, and protein engineering to study metalloenzymes involved in small-molecule activation reactions like hydrogen production and CO2 fixation.

Antonio Tinoco Valencia (Chemistry & Biochemistry) uses synthetic chemistry, chemical biology, and microbiology to discover and engineer enzymatic functions in the human gut microbiome, with implications for human health.

Hong Zhou (Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics) pioneers cryo-electron microscopy and tomography methods to visualize the atomic-level structures of viruses and protein-nucleic acid complexes involved in infection and cancer.

Please join us in welcoming the new mentors to the CBI training community!