Remembrance of Dr. Linda Kurz
Dr. Linda Kurz, emeritus research faculty member of our department, died on December 17, 2020, at home in rural Franklin County. She was 74.
Dr. Kurz worked with Drs. Carl Frieden and George Drysdale for many years, investigating enzyme mechanisms. She was true biochemist, as hard-core as they come. She retired a few years ago, and many of us overlapped with her for a substantial period of time. I believe she gets credit for the sign on the Frieden lab door saying “if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research.”
To read more, including remembrances from colleagues click here.
Mr. Matthew A. Cruz joined the lab of Dr. Gregory Bowman in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics where he studies the relationship between an ebolavirus protein’s structural dynamics and its function. Through computational and experimental techniques he is measuring how changes in protein dynamics affect RNA binding. Matthew is applying this research to find drugs that disrupt protein dynamics to combat ebolavirus infections. 
Work by 
On October 16th, 2020, Dr. Michael Greenberg was an expert guest on the American Journal of Physiology podcast talking about “DCM Mutations Alter Intracellular Ca2+ and Signaling”. To listen, 
Congratulations to Dr. Jim Janetka, whose promotion to Professor was officially approved on September 11, 2020. 
Dr. Natalie Niemi joined the Department on July 1, 2020, as an Assistant Professor on the Investigator Track. Her lab will investigates how mitochondria are built, regulated, and maintained across physiological contexts. We blend biochemistry, systems biology, and physiology to understand mechanisms of mitochondrial regulation and how they influence metabolism and organellar function. Using insights gained from our molecular studies, we aim to understand how mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to mammalian pathophysiology, with the long-term goal of translating our discoveries into new therapeutic options to restore mitochondrial function in human disease.
Dr. Alex Holehouse joined the Department on January 1, 2020, as an Assistant Professor on the Investigator track. His lab will explore how intrinsically disordered protein regions confer biological function and how this goes wrong in disease. The lab integrates physics-based models (all-atom and coarse-grained simulations) with informatics and machine learning to develop sequence-specific predictions. They then test those predictions either within the lab or with collaborators around the world. 
Jhullian Alston (JJ) is a fourth-year graduate student in the Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology (BBSB) program. He is completing his Ph.D. thesis work jointly between the labs of Dr. Andrea Soranno and Dr. Alex Holehouse, where he combines computational biophysics with single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy to understand how intrinsically disordered regions within a protein can affect interactions with both proteins and nucleic acids. 
Jasmine is a fourth-year graduate student in the Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology (BBSB) program. She is doing her PhD thesis work in the lab of Dr. Andrea Soranno, where she studies how sequence composition of intrinsically disordered regions within a protein can affect interactions with both proteins and nucleic acids using single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. 