Cryo-EM Grant Program from Thermo Fisher Scientific

Jessica Heebner is a sixth year PhD candidate working in the Swulius Lab at Penn State College of Medicine studying neuron development with cryo-electron tomography. She is working towards a degree in Biomedical Science and Clinical and Translational Science. During her studies, Jess has developed a passion for image analysis and deep learning. She has developed an efficient workflow for training neural networks to segment everything from FIB-SEM to microCT to cryo-electron tomography data. Now in the final year of her program, Jess is working towards creating a whole growth cone protein atlas using a combination of montage tomography and deep learning segmentation.  In her free time, Jess enjoys spending time with her pets and family and catering to the whims of a two-year-old. After graduation, she hopes to continue to develop her career in deep learning image analysis.

Siyu Chen is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Elizabeth Villa at UCSD, HHMI. He received his PhD in biophysics in 2022 at Northwestern University in the interdisciplinary biological sciences (IBiS) program, where he worked with Dr. Yuan He, using the cutting-edge technique of single particle cryo-EM to study the assembly and dynamics of large protein-DNA complexes and their functions in the process of DNA repair and transcription initiation. Siyu’s PhD training was sponsored by the Rappaport award from the department and the Molecular Biophysics training grant from NIH.

With a solid training in the field of structural biology on single-particle cryo-EM, Siyu aims to extend his research interests into in situ structural biology during his postdoctoral tenure, obtaining high-resolution maps of molecular assemblies when they function in their native environment. In Dr. Elizabeth Villa’s biophysics and cellular biology laboratory, he will utilize the state-of-the-art techniques of cryo-electron tomography with focused ion-beam milling (cryo-FIB-ET) to study the molecular mechanism of LRRK2 function at lysosomes and Golgi networks, as well as how mutant LRRK2 is related to Parkinson’s disease. With his background and enthusiasm, as well as the leading-edge technologies being developed in close collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific, Siyu will devote himself to help advance the understanding of molecular mechanisms of PD and contribute to our fight against this disease.

Dr. Eshun-Wilson is currently a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow (NSF-PRFB) in the laboratory of Dr. Gabriel Lander at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. She completed her PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Eva Nogales at UC Berkeley as a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) and Ford Foundation Fellowship. She also received the 2020 Cris Alvaro PhD Commencement Prize for excellence in research and community service. Currently, she uses the most powerful microscopes on the planet, transmission electron microscopes, to visualize the ways molecular machines can be harnessed to fight disease, with an emphasis on mitochondrial quality control proteases—or, in other words, vital stress sensors of the cell. She aims to characterize how these biological motors communicate within the body, providing avenues for therapeutic intervention in cancer, heart disease, and neurodegeneration.