CURRENT MEMBERS
*Contact emails are hyperlinked to name
Olga Boudker, Principal Investigator
Professor of Physiology and Biophysics
Twitter: @OlgaBoudker
Olga went to Novosibirsk State University in Russia before obtaining her MSc from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, working with Anthony Futerman on sphingolipid biochemistry. She received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, where she worked on protein folding with Ernesto Freire. Olga then trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Peter Kim at MIT and Eric Gouaux at Columbia University. There, she became interested in the structure and mechanism of membrane transporters. She started her lab at Weill Cornell Medical College in 2005.
Physiology and Biophysics
Will received his BS degree in Biochemistry at State University of New York in Syracuse. He studied vesicle fusion in relation to the activity of SNARE proteins and SNARE regulatory proteins. He joined Boudker lab in 2018 as a lab manager/researcher.
Physiology and Biophysics
Xiaoyu earned her PhD from University of Miami. Currently in the Boudker lab she works on the transport mechanism of glutamate transporters using a combination of biophysical tools including cryo-EM and single molecule fluorescence imaging.
Yun Huang, Postdoctoral Researcher
Physiology and Biophysics
Yun received his PhD degree in chemical biology from Max Planck Institute in Germany and an initial postdoctoral training from University of Pennsylvania. He joined Boudker lab as a postdoctoral associate in 2015. His current research focuses on using NMR spectroscopy to understand the transport mechanism of glutamate transporters.
Krishna Reddy, Postdoctoral Researcher
Physiology and Biophysics
Twitter: @firewhenreddy
Krishna got his BS in Microbiology at the University of Florida in 2011 and his PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of South Florida in 2016. He joined the Boudker Lab in November 2016. He is currently exploring the evolutionary mechanisms that have enabled differential ion selectivity between modern aspartate/glutamate transporters.
Biao Qiu, Postdoctoral Researcher
Physiology and Biophysics
Twitter: @BiaoQiu1
Biao received a BS degree in Bioengineering from Zhengzhou University, China in 2008. He earned his PhD degree at 2014 at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he studied the structure and regulating mechanisms of Arf guanine exchange factor by X-ray crystallography. Then he carried out his postdoctoral study at Shanghai Tech University, where he solved the crystal structure of acetate channel. In 2017, he joined in the Boudker lab to study excitatory amino acid transporters.
Qianyi Wu, Postdoctoral Researcher
Physiology and Biophysics
Twitter: @QianyiWu_
ORCID: 0000-0003-4991-1692
Qianyi received her Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in 2016 and her PhD in Medical Sciences (Pharmacology) in 2020 at the University of Sydney, Australia. She joined the Boudker Lab as a postdoctoral scientist in June 2021, and her research focuses on exploring the links between the structure, function, and conformational dynamics of glutamate transporters.
Farideh Baluchi, Postdoctoral Researcher
Physiology and Biophysics
Twitter: @faridehbadichi
In 2012 and 2016, I obtained my Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Physical Chemistry from Sistan and Baluchestan University, Iran. Following my graduate studies, I joined the Molecular Bio-Computation & Drug Design Lab in the Health Science Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa as a postdoctoral researcher in May 2017. During this time, I investigated the inhibitory mechanism of covalent and non-covalent inhibitors against the epidermal growth factor receptor in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). After two years, I joined the Kuttele research group at the University of Cape Town in South Africa as a postdoctoral researcher in June 2019. My work there focused on molecular modeling of carbohydrates, while also continuing my research on NSCLC. In 2021, I joined the Truhlar research group in the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota, USA. There, my research centered on studying the energetics, mechanisms, and dynamics of atomic oxygen reactions. Currently, I am a member of the Boudker Lab, where I investigate the structure and conformational dynamics of membrane transporters using both experimental and computational methods.
Poonam Dhankhar, Postdoctoral Researcher
Twitter: @PoonamK37344053
Poonam earned her Ph.D. in structural biology from the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India, and completed her initial postdoctoral training at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She joined the Boudker lab as a postdoctoral associate in April 2023. She is interested in exploring the structure and function of membrane transporters associated with human diseases.
Vishnu Ganesh Ghani, Graduate Student
Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology Graduate Program
Vishnu earned his dual BS from SUNY: Stony Brook University in Mathematics and Physics. He then worked as a research technician/assistant at Rockefeller University for three years, exploring the world of fluorescence and microscopy. In 2019, he started his Ph.D. studies at Weill Cornell and joined the Boudker Lab in 2020. He is interested in uncovering transporter mechanisms through various probing techniques.
Yessenia Lopez, Graduate Student
Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology Graduate Program
Twitter: @ylopez1192Alumni
Yessenia got her BS from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Forensic Science, with a concentration in Toxicology and a minor in mathematics. She then did a two-year post-baccalaureate program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is currently a PhD student at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Physiology, Biophysics, and Systems Biology program. Her work focuses on the evolution of ion specificity in glutamate transporters.
Burha received her BS from the City College of New York (CCNY) in Biochemistry. She is currently taking a gap year before moving onto graduate school.
RECENT ALUMNI
Glenn Gregorio, Research Specialist
Physiology and Biophysics
Glenn earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of GPCR-mediated signal transduction using single-molecule approaches.
Andoni Nolasco, Undergraduate Summer Student
Andoni was born in Queens, NY, and studied biomedical engineering at Columbia University. As a summer student in the Boudker Lab, he worked on optimizing NMR conditions to understand the transport mechanism of a glutamate transporter. He is interested in host-pathogen interactions and the microbiome and is starting graduate school in the fall of 2022.
Nemanja Kutlešić, Undergraduate Summer Student
Nemanja was born in Serbia and studied biotechnology at the University of Camerino, Italy. He then pursued studies in molecular biology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He is interested in structural biology of molecular machines. As a summer student in the Boudker lab, he worked on determination of the structure of an ancestrally reconstructed amino acid transporter. He is also passionate about science outreach. He is starting graduate school at Cold Spring Harbor in the fall of 2022.
Eva Fortea, Graduate Student
Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology Graduate Program
Eva got her B.S. degree from The Autonomous University of Barcelona in Microbiology. Then she moved to Montreal, where she graduated with an M.Sc. in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Montreal. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the Physiology, Biophysics, and Systems Biology graduate program at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2021. She worked under the supervision of Dr. Olga Boudker and Dr. Alessio Accardi on the mechanism and evolution CLC family of membrane proton/chloride exchangers. She became an Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo.
Didar Ciftci, Graduate Student
Tri-Institutional Ph.D. Program in Chemical Biology
Twitter: @minerva2
Didar earned her B.S. degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Bogazici University, Turkey. She received her Ph.D. in 2021 from the Tri-institutional Program in Chemical Biology. She worked on the single-molecule dynamics and function of glutamate transporters. She joined Zhuang Lab at Harvard University as a Postdoctoral Fellow.
Gerard Huysmans, Instructor
Physiology and Biophysics
Gerard has a degree in bio-engineering from The Free University of Brussels. He studied membrane protein folding during his Ph.D. at the University of Leeds. His interest in membrane protein dynamics brought him to the Boudker lab, where he studied the structure and conformational dynamics of transporters.