Congratulations to Jenna Lin for receiving the 2024 John E. Majors Award

Jenna Lin received her B.S. in Bioengineering and a minor in Biology from University of Missouri-Columbia. During her undergraduate research, Jenna developed a great interest in ion channels and electrophysiology. She began her Ph.D. studies in the Biophysics program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 and joined the Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology program in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis in 2020 when the lab relocated. Jenna’s thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Baron Chanda focuses on probing the role of the C-linker on gating polarity in the cyclic nucleotide binding domain ion channel family using electrophysiology and approaches in molecular evolution such as ancestral sequence reconstruction. Her findings reveal that residues in the intersubunit interface of the C-linker are crucial for hyperpolarization-dependent activation.

In addition to her thesis project, Jenna has been a bench mentor and team player in the lab with 3D printing, electrophysiology, and molecular biology. Outside of lab, she was a Co-Founder of two Biophysical Society Student Chapters, helping establish chapters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as Vice President and at the University of Missouri-Columbia as Secretary.