Principle Investigator: Gavin Williams
I'm originally from England, which means I watch soccer and drink tea all
the time. I received my Bachelors Degree in biochemistry (First Class
Honours) from the University of Wales, and moved to Leeds in the north
east of England where I completed my PhD under the supervision of Dr
Alan Berry. I then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a
post-doc with Prof Jon Thorson.
Nicole Coggins
Originally from the home of 'The Office' (US version), Scranton Pennsylvania, Nicole received her bachelor's degree in Biotechnology from Marywood University. She is currently working on new methods to select and screen synthetic riboswitches.
Matthew Draelos
Matthew is a resident of North Carolina and is an NC State University Park Scholar. He has been working in our group as an undergraduate research assistant, and is funded by a Park Scholar Research Grant. Matthew is currently being trained at an REU program at UC-Berkeley, and we hope to have him back soon!
Irina Koryakina
Irina is from the frozen depths of Russia where she obtained her BS in Pharmacy at the Perm State
Pharmaceutical Academy. She is now a PhD candidate using directed evolution to alter the substrate
specificity of enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of natural products.
Christopher Ladner
Chris graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL with a BS in Chemistry and Mathematics. He joined the group as a PhD candidate and is currently using directed evolution to improve enzymes that site-selectively modify proteins. Chris also seems to like windmills.
John McArthur
John completed his BS at the University of South Carolina and joined the
group as a PhD candidate currently devising new methods for evolving
novel enzymatic functions in vitro.
Tanvisha Mody
Tanvisha is an undergraduate researcher joining us from the Dept of Biochemistry at
NCSU.
Jessica Neville
Born in North Carolina, Jessica is currently completing her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry. Jessica started in our lab as an NSF REU summer student, and has been an undergraduate research assistant in the Williams ever since! During the summer of 2011, Jessica secured a prestigious training placement at the NIH.
Niranjan Parajuli
Niranjan is a post-doctoral research assistant originally from Nepal. He joins
us with a great deal of expertise in the field of natural product biosynthesis.
Alexandra Smith
Alex is currently in the first year of her Chemistry/Biochemistry double major. She joins
us as an undergraduate researcher.
Steve Walsh
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Steve then took his talents to New York where he got a BE in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union. Now he is a PhD candidate in chemistry focusing his research on riboswitches and microfluidics. Steve was also Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2006!
Zhixia Ye
Zhixia graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology with a BS in Chemistry and
joined Dr. Williams’s group in fall 2009. My research in the group is focused
on optimization of faulty protein-protein interactions in biosynthetic enzymes using
directed evolution.