Team
Alan did his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge with Tom Blundell and was a postdoc with Matt Higgins and Venki Ramakrishnan. He started at HMS in September 2017 and was named a Pew Biomedical Scholar in 2019. He was promoted to Associate Professor in January 2023.
Jeremy completed his BS at Bates College in Maine, where he was a biology major and chemistry minor. After graduating, Jeremy spent two years as a research technician in the Aydin lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he used cryo-EM to elucidate the structures of mitochondrial membrane-shaping proteins. Jeremy returned to New England to start his PhD at HMS, studying mechanisms of protein trafficking and quality control in cilia.
Tierra completed her BS at UC–San Diego, where she studied molecular biology. After graduation, Tierra spent two years as a research technician at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology studying arena- and filovirus spike proteins before moving to Boston to start her PhD.
Matt received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 2022. With William Lehman, he used cryo-EM and molecular dynamics to understand the mechanisms of cardiac muscle contraction and the structural causes of cardiomyopathies. Matt joined the lab in September 2022 to study the regulation of ciliary motility. He was awarded a Merck Company Foundation Fellowship in 2023.
Sven completed his Ph.D. with Sir Philip Cohen at the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) in Dundee, Scotland, where he structurally characterized IRAK pseudokinases. Next, he did postdoctoral training with Yogesh Kulathu, also at the MRC PPU, working on branched ubiquitin chains and deubiquitinases. Sven joined the Brown lab in October 2022 to determine how ubiquitinated proteins are retrieved from cilia. He was awarded a Sara Elizabeth O'Brien Trust Postdoc Fellowship in 2023.
Shimi received her Ph.D. from Pune University, India where she studied stress-induced regulation of protein synthesis in protozoan parasites. As a postdoctoral fellow at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and later at Harvard Medical School, she worked on the characterization of translational initiation in Leishmania. Shimi joined the lab in 2019 as a Research Associate and works to understand the mechanisms of intraflagellar transport in Leishmania. In 2022, she determined the structure of the IFT-A complex.
Haixia received her Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in 2019 where she studied SARS and MERS coronaviruses. Haixia joined the lab in September 2019 initially as a joint postdoc with Dr. Johannes Walter to determine the structure of CRL2Lrr1, the E3 ubiquitin ligase responsible for unloading CMG from replicated DNA. In the Brown lab, Haixia works on the structural basis of IFT. Haixia was a 2021 BCMP-Merck Postdoctoral Fellow.