People
David F. Savage
Dave is a Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dave was born and raised in rural Iowa. He continues to help manage his family’s farm, which was recognized in 2010 as an Iowa Heritage Farm. Dave attended Gustavus Adolphus College, where he earned a B.A. in Chemistry and minored in Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 from UCSF for his work on membrane protein structure determination with Robert Stroud. From 2007 to 2011, Dave was a Life Sciences Research Foundation fellow with Pamela Silver in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.
Research in the Savage Lab focuses on understanding and engineering two of the most compelling biochemical systems found in nature: CO2 fixation and genome editing enzyme machineries. Ultimately, this works seeks to develop enabling genome editing technology and apply it for improving photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in plants. For this work, Dave’s research has been recognized with the DOE Early Career Program Award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and he was selected for the 2018 “Future of Biochemistry” issue by ACS-Biochemistry. Dave is also an enthusiastic supporter of science capacity building and translation, and he is a co-creator of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory course on synthetic biology, a founding member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, co-creator of the African Plant Breeding Academy CRISPR Course and a co-founder of Scribe Therapeutics.
Email @ berkeley: savage
Muntathar Al-Shimary
Muntathar is a graduate student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program and jointly advised by Jennifer Doudna. He is interested in the discovery and characterization of new CRISPR-Cas effectors.
E: muntathar_alshimary
David Ding
David is an NSF Research Fellow in the lab who obtained his PhD in protein evolution at Harvard/MIT. He is interested in developing high-throughput and computational methods to engineer biological systems to address sustainability goals.
E: davidding
Evan Groover
Evan is a graduate student in Plant and Microbial Biology. He is and is developing gene editing tools to study and improve plant photosynthesis.
E: groover
Carolina Guerrero
Carolina is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology and jointly advised by Jennifer Doudna. She is interested in CRISPR tool development.
E: carolina.guerrero
Maria Lukarska
Maria is a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellow in the lab who obtained her PhD in structural biology at EMBL. She is interested in using protein engineering to create more efficient and specific genetic engineering tools.
E: mlukarska
Luke Oltrogge
Luke is a project scientist in the lab who obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Stanford. He is interested in the biophysical mechanisms driving the self-assembly of bacterial microcompartments, in particular the α-carboxysome.
E: luke.oltrogge
Jung-Un Park
Jung-Un is a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow in the lab who obtained his PhD in Chemistry from Cornell University. He is broadly interested in protein structure, function and engineering.
E: jungun.park
Naiya Phillips
Naiya is a graduate student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program. She is interested in characterizing the sequenc-function landscape of enzymes which use CO2.
E: naiyaphillips
Andrew Plebanek
Andrew is interested in the evolution of proteins and functional RNAs as well as applying and developing novel protein engineering techniques.
E: andrewplebanek
Noam Prywes
Noam is a postdoctoral fellow and who works jointly with the lab of Brian Staskwicz. He is studying rubisco biochemistry and chloroplast transformation technology.
E: prywes
Joseph Rivera
Joe is a staff research associate in the laboratory.
E: josephr5462
Jorge Rodriguez
Jorge is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology.
E: rodriguez_jorge
Julia Tartaglia
Julia is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology and jointly advised by Jennifer Doudna. She is interested in high throughput strategies to engineer and advance the delivery of CRISPR proteins.
E: julia_tartaglia
Cynthia Terrace
Cynthia is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology. She is interested in CRISPR tool development.
E: cynthia_terrace
Brittney Thornton
Brittney is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology. Brittney is researching how CRISPR systems acquire new spacers to recognize foreign genetic invaders, and is interested in approaching this question using high throughput screening. Brittney is a joint student with the Doudna Lab.
E: brittneywt
Flora Wang
Flora is a graduate student in Plant and Microbial Biology and is jointly advised by Krishna Niyogi.
E: florazhiqiwang
Rachel Weissman
Rachel is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology.
E: rfw