Primary Faculty

Research Interest: The Ali team develops antiviral drug candidates using structure-based design strategies to avoid resistance.

Broader Impact: HIV, HCV, cancer, influenza, dengue, COVID-19

Office Location: LRB 840
Lab Location: LRB 860 C
Phone: 508-856-8873

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Bolon Lab investigates relationships between protein sequence, structure and function.

Broader Impact: COVID-19, cancer, HIV

Office Location: LRB 922
Lab Location: LRB 960 E-D
Phone: 508-856-3588

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Flores Kim lab studies how bacteria build their cell envelopes and how antimicrobials disrupt these processes.

Key Words: bacterial cell envelope; antibiotic resistance; antibiotic tolerance

Research Tools: We use a combination of classical, modern and chemical genetic screens with biochemical and high-resolution imaging analyses. 

Broader Impact: drug resistant and tolerant bacterial infections

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 915
Lab Location: LRB 970 U
Phone: 508-856-6260

Lab Page

Research Interest: Dr. Flynn investigates how changes in DNA sequence impact protein function.

Key Words: drug resistance, protein adaptation, protein folding, evolution, mutagenesis, deep mutational scanning

Research Tools: S. cerevisiae (yeast)

Broader Impact: cancer, SARS-CoV2

she/her/hers
Lab Location: LRB 960 D
Phone: 508-856-4418

Research Interest: The Han lab uses a multidisciplinary approach to develop nanomaterials for use in chemistry and biology research and in drug delivery.

Office Location: LRB 806
Lab Location: LRB 870 U
Phone: 508-856-3297


Lab Page

Research Interest: The Imbalzano Lab studies the role of chromatin remodeling in cell fate specification and maintenance.

Key Words: Chromatin remodeling, gene expression, development, cancer, mesenchymal cells, myogenesis, adipogenesis

Research Tools: Cell Culture, M. musculus (mouse)

Broader Impact: Breast Cancer

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 813
Lab Location: LRB 870 H
Phone: 508-856-1029

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Kelch Lab utilizes structural biology and biochemistry to reveal the workings of large macromolecular complexes, with a special focus on those involved in DNA replication/repair and virus assembly. 

Research Tools: E. coli (bacteria), S. cerevisiae (yeast), T. thermophilus (bacteria), H. sapiens (human)

Broader Impact: cancer, PARD, infectious disease

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 923
Lab Location: LRB 970 H-G
Phone: 508-856-8322

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Kobertz Lab develops new tools to study the roles of glycosylation in ion channel localization and function. 

Broader Impact: Cardiac arrythmias, hearing loss

Office Location: LRB 804
Lab Location: LRB 840 C
Phone: 508-856-8861

Lab Page

Research Interest: Biological function, enzyme inhibition and drug resistance.
 
Key Words: protein structure, biomolecular complexes, conformational dynamics, enzyme inhibition

Research Tools: viral proteases, deaminases, renalase

Broader Impact: Viral infections (HIV-1, HCV, coronaviruses, influence, dengue), cancer, type I diabetes

Office Location: LRB 919
Phone: 508-856-1867

Lab Page 

Research Interest: The Massi lab uses their expertise in NMR Spectroscopy to understand the dynamics of protein-RNA interactions.

Office Location: LRB 925
Lab Location: LRB 960 B, 970 N
Phone: 508-856-4501

Lab Page

Research Interest: The McCollum Lab studies how cells sense mechanical forces through the Hippo pathway.

Key Words: Cancer, mechano-signaling, Hippo pathway, YAP/TAZ

Research Tools: Cell culture

Broader Impact: cancer, wound repair

Office Location: LRB 823
Lab Location: LRB 870 N
Phone: 508-856-8767

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Miller Lab develops optical imaging probes, ranging from the design of new fluorescent molecules to engineered luciferins and luciferases for in vivo bioluminescence imaging. 

Key Words: bioluminescence, fluorescence, near-infrared, imaging, probes, chemical biology 

Research Tools: fluorescence microscopy, synthetic organic chemistry, bioluminescence imaging, AAV transduction, mouse models, mammalian cell culture, spectrophotometry, NMR, mammalian cell culture, M. musculus (mouse)

Broader Impact: optical probes are broadly applicable to study many different diseases

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 805
Lab Location: LRB 870 X
Phone: 508-856-8865

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Munson lab studies vesicle trafficking machinery and how specificity in vesicle targeting and fusion is achieved. 

Key Words: membrane trafficking, exocytosis, endocytosis, exocyst, VPS45, SNAREs, vesicle fusion, neutropenia

Research Tools: protein and membrane biochemistry, biophysics, cryoEM, yeast and mammalian cell biology, immunology, mouse models of disease

Broader Impact: immune dysfunction, cancer, neurological disorders

she/her/hers
Office Location: LRB 905
Lab Location: LRB 970 P, Q, R
Phone: 508-856-8318

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Pederson lab researches RNA biosynthesis in the nucleolus. 

Key Words: RNA biosynthesis; RNA-protein interactions; the nucleolus; chromosome dynamics

Research Tools: mammalian cell culture

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 821
Lab Location: (n/a)
Phone: 508-856-8667
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: Dr. Pryciak studies how protein kinases regulate cell signaling and the cell cycle.

Key Words: MAP kinases (MAPKs), cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), short linear motifs (SLiMs)

Research Tools: S. cerevisiae (yeast)

Office Location: LRB 822
Lab Location: LRB 870 P
Phone: 508-856-8756
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Rando Lab studies the role of epigenetic inheritance in programming health and disease.

Key Words: epigenetics, chromatin, small non-coding RNA, embryology, spermatogenesis

Research Tools: S. cerevisiae (yeast), M. musculus (mouse), C. elegans (nematode worm)

Broader Impact: Paternal environments can affect diabetes, metabolic syndrome, anxiety, schizophrenia and more.

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 906
Lab Location: LRB 940 A-C &
LRB 970 X-Y
Phone: 508-856-8879

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Redding Lab seeks to discover general physical principles that affect how genetic information is organized and accessed.

Key Words: Chromatin organization, protein-DNA interactions, Epigenetics, single molecule biophysics, phase separation

Research Tools: single molecule techniques, TIRF microscopy, confocal microscopy.

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 926
Lab Location: LRB 960 B
Phone: 774-455-6635
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Rhind lab studies cell size regulation and temporal coordination of DNA replication

Key Words: DNA replication, cell cycle, cell size, replication kinetics

Research Tools: S. cerevisiae (yeast)

Broader Impact: Cancer

Office Location: LRB 904
Lab Location: LRB 940 E-D
Phone: 508-856-8316

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Royer lab uses their expertise in X-Ray Crystallography to study how the assembly of macromolecules regulates biological function.
 
Key Words: Structural Biology, X-ray Crystallography, Protein Assembly and regulation.

Research Tools: X-Ray Crystallography

Broader Impact: Cancer

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 921
Lab Location: LRB 970 G, W
Phone: 508-856-6912

Lab Page

Research Interest: The Ryder Lab studies the role of egg (maternal) mRNA in embryonic development.

Key Words: RNA, oogenesis, embryogenesis, germline development, protein-RNA interactions

Research Tools: C. elegans (nematode worm)

Broader Impact: Reproductive health, microdeletion syndromes, genome editing, RNA therapeutics

he/him/his
Office Location: LRB 906
Lab Location: LRB 970 W
Phone: 508-856-1372
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Schiffer Lab studies the molecular basis for drug resistance and has developed a new paradigm for avoiding drug resistance when targeting enzymes in structure-based drug design.

Research Tools:  protein crystallography, CryoEM/CryoET, molecular dynamics simulations, homology modeling, enzymatic assays and medicinal chemistry,

Broader Impact: RNA Viruses (HIV, HTLV, Influenza, Coronaviruses, Enteroviruses, Flaviviruses) and Cancer

Office Location: LRB 928
Lab Location: LRB 840 D; 860 C; 960 E; 970 C, D, L, M
Phone: 508-856-8008
  
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Somasundaran team studies how cells and viruses interact with each other to develop molecular diagnostics and new antiviral therapies. 

Research Tools: cell culture, M. musculus (mouse)

Broader Impact: HIV, EBV, infectious mononucleosis, influenza, SARS-CoV1, SARS-CoV2, cancer

Office Location: LRB 960 E
Phone: 508-856-4408

Lab Page

Research Interest: Dr. Song is the manager of the Cryo-EM Core Facility.

Research Tools: Cryo-electron microscopy

Office Location: LRB 970 C
Phone: 508-856-8812
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Thompson lab is a leader in the field of chemical biology and exploits these techniques to study biomedically-important enzymes and proteins including the Protein Arginine Deiminases, STING and SARM1.

Key Words: Drug discovery, deimination, autoimmunity, rheumatoid arthritis, citrullination, enzymology

Research Tools: Enzymology, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, proteomics, inhibitor design

Broader Impact: rheumatoid arthritis, sepsis, lupus, STING-associated vasculopathy in infancy, ALS, peripheral neuropathies, cancer.

Office Location: LRB 825
Lab Location: LRB 860 B, C, E
Phone: 508-856-8492
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Thyme Lab studies neurodevelopmental disorders using zebrafish.

Key Words: zebrafish, neurodevelopmental disorder, intellectual disability, Down syndrome, drug discovery, computation, genomics, mRNA, scRNA-seq, genome-editing, CRISPR, protein engineering

Research Tools: zebrafish, CRISPR

Broader Impact: developing treatments for intellectual disability in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Office Location: LRB 803
Lab Location: LRB 870 R/S
Phone: 508-856-3251
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: The Xu lab is constantly researching ways to increase accessibility of Cryo-EM techniques.

Key Words: Cryo-electron Microscopy, Structural Biology

Research Tools: Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Office Location: LRB 902 & 
SA-106
Lab Location: SA-106
Phone: 774-455-4050
 
Lab Page

Research Interest: the Xu lab studies the mechanism of and therapy for ALS using mouse and other models.

Research Tools: M. musculus (mouse)

Broader Impact: ALS

Office Location: LRB 817
Lab Location: LRB 870 J, K
Phone: 508-856-3309
 
Lab Page