People
Joey Davis
Whitehead Associate Professor of Biology
jhdavis[at]mit | CV
Having worked in Bob Sauer’s group as a Ph.D. student, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to return to MIT to start my lab. After graduating, I was the first employee at Ginkgo BioWorks, a local synthetic biology startup company and later was a post-doc in San Diego where I was jointly advised by Jamie Williamson and Malene Hansen. I’m excited to be back in Boston and working on key problems at the intersection of biochemistry, structural biology, and macromolecular complex assembly!
Tori Yetman
Laboratory Administrator
yetman27[at]mit
Tori comes from a background in Social Work and Education. She currently works with the Davis, Lamason, and Baker Labs at MIT. When not supporting the labs, she enjoys playing basketball and rock climbing!
Post-doctoral Fellows
Robert Miller
rcm095[at]mit
Rob obtained his PhD in Chemistry & Chemical Biology from Cornell University. As a co-advised graduate student at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source and in Nozomi Ando’s lab, he developed high-pressure small-angle X-ray scattering instrumentation and investigated the mechanism of allosteric regulation in E. coli aspartate transcarbamoylase using a combination of crystallography, small-angle X-ray scattering, and cryo-EM. In the Davis lab, Rob is integrating structural techniques with instrument development and machine learning to study the mechanism of co-translational protein folding.
Sam Sedor
ssedor@mit.edu
Sam completed her PhD in Susan Shao’s lab at Harvard Medical School, where she studied histone chaperone complexes using biochemistry and cryo-EM. Now, she works with the Davis lab and the Sankaran lab at Boston Children’s Hospital to explore the fate of protein complexes during red blood cell development.
Graduate Students
Bertina Telusma
btelusma[at]mit
Bertina started her research career at MIT in the Bell lab as an HHMI EXROP student. In the Davis lab, Bertina is now working to measure autophagic flux using pulse-labeling mass spectrometry in yeast, and has applied this technique to understand the role of various proteostasis pathways in remodeling the proteome.
April Lee
AprilLee[at]mit
April completed her undergraduate training at Cornell University in Joshua Chappie’s group studying protein crystallography. In the Davis lab, she is currently working to understand the mechanisms behind selective autophagy of ferritin through structural and biochemical techniques. April uses both X-ray crystallographic and cryo-EM in analyzing her complexes.
Jen Kosmatka
kosmatka[at]mit
Jen completed her undergraduate training at UC Berkeley in Eva Nogales’s lab. Wanting to experience “seasons” she came to MIT and is a joint member of the Davis and Keating labs, where she is currently studying autophagic cargo selection via protein-peptide interactions using high-throughput cell-surface display and computational structure-based design.
Gabriella Lopez Perez
gslopez[at]mit
Gabriella completed her undergraduate degree at University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez and was an MSRP student at MIT in the Gehring lab and Lourido lab. Leaving the perfect warm weather of Puerto Rico, she joined MIT Biology Program and the Davis lab where she is studying the role of bacterial helicases in facilitating ribosome assembly.
Mira May
miramay@mit
Mira completed her undergraduate training at Pomona College in Clarissa Cheney’s group and was an MSRP student at MIT in the Drennan lab. Curious about the “other coast”, she came to MIT and is now studying the role of bacterial helicases in facilitating ribosome assembly. Mira is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Maria Ribeiro Vicente Perfeito Carreira
mariacar@mit
Maria completed her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at University College London (UCL), where she worked in Dr. Elina Vladimirou’s lab on the effects of aberrant PI3K signaling on microtubule dynamics. Excited to move across the pond, Maria joined the MIT Biology program. In the Davis lab, she is working on new computational methods to further resolve conformational flexibility using cryo-EM.
Jackson Carrion
jcarrion@mit.edu
Jackson completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Arizona State University (ASU) in Petra Fromme’s lab, where he focused on developing XFEL methods to study protein dynamics at femtosecond time-scales. Eager to escape the heat, Jackson joined the MIT Computational & Systems Biology Program. In the Davis lab, he is now passionate about developing and applying new cryo-EM methods for in-situ and time-resolved studies on a variety of macromolecules.
Visiting Scientist
Michelle Fry
fry@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu
Michelle completed her PhD training at Caltech under the mentorship of Bil Clemons. During her graduate studies she used various structural biology techniques, including cryo-EM and crystallography, paired with biochemical and bioinformatical approaches to study the mechanism and selectivity of tail-anchored protein targeting. During her Post-doctoral work in Luke Chao’s lab at MGH, Michelle has been using crystallography, cryo-EM, and cryo-ET to investigate mitochondrial macromolecular complexes and their role in regulating membrane morphology. As a visiting scientist, Michelle is learning about the image processing techniques developed by the Davis lab.
Undergraduate Students
We also regularly hosts summer undergraduate research students through MIT’s MSRP summer research program. You can read more about Davis lab alumni from this program here, here, and here.
Visitors
Hana – Davis lab Mascot
RUFF[AT]JHDAVISLAB.ROCKS
Hana is primarily focused on carrots. And sticks. She loves sticks.