Faculty

The chemical biology community at UC Davis includes a large group of productive, well funded and collaborative faculty members with a strong history of mentoring pre-doctoral students. Our faculty comprises 30 trainers with primary appointments in six different departments across five different colleges.


Alphabetical Listing

  • James Ames | Biophysical chemistry and structural biology
  • Shota Atsumi | Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering
  • Peter Beal | Nucleic acids chemical biology
  • Randy Carney Nanoplasmonics, Raman spectroscopy/SERS, exosomes, cancer diagnostics
  • Xi Chen | Chemical biology/glycoscience
  • Sheila David | Chemical biology of DNA repair
  • Oliver Fiehn | Mass spectrometry and computation chemistry for metabolomics
  • Andrew Fisher | Protein structure-function and X-ray crystallography
  • Alec H. FollmerAdvancing the frontiers of metalloenzymology by designing innovative approaches to understand the non-equilibrium dynamics that drive the catalytic processes of metal-containing enzymes
  • Annaliese Franz | Organic synthesis, catalysis, and biofuels
  • Christopher Fraser | Cellular and viral mRNA translation in humans
  • Bruce Hammock | Biological chemistry of regulatory lipids, medicinal chemistry
  • Marie Heffern | Bioinorganic chemistry in nutrition and diseases, chemical biology and imaging
  • Kit Lam | Lymphoma, targeted therapy for cancer, molecular imaging, drug development and combinatorial chemistry
  • Carlito Lebrilla | Bioanalytical mass spectrometry
  • James Letts | Membrane protein electron transport complexes in bioenergetics and immunity
  • Angelique Louie (Biomedical Engineering) | Molecular imaging and novel imaging probes
  • Elizabeth Neumann | Understanding the molecular and cellular architecture behind neurological diseases
  • David Olson | Organic synthesis and chemical neuroscience
  • Matthew Paszek | Investigating how signaling patterns emerge from spatial arrangements outside of thermodynamic equilibrium and what role mechanical forces and biophysical interactions play in organizing biomolecules at molecular length scales
  • David Segal | Genome engineering tools and therapeutics
  • Nitzan Shabek | Molecular mechanisms of signaling pathways and their regulation by proteolytic systems
  • Jared Shaw | Synthetic methods, natural products, chemical biology
  • Justin Siegel | Computational enzyme design
  • Cheemeng Tan Synthetic biology, artificial cellular systems, gene regulation, cellular heterogeneity, antibiotic treatment
  • Dean Tantillo | Theoretical organic chemistry, natural products biosynthesis
  • Igor Vorobyov | Molecular modeling and simulations of molecular systems
  • Aijun Wang | Stem cells, biomaterials, tissue regeneration, vascular disease, birth defects
  • Heike Wulff | Design of potassium channel modulators
  • Philipp Zerbe | Unveiling the diversity of plant metabolism for plant and human health

 

By Graduate Group Affiliation

The faculty listings below are sorted by graduate group affiliations. Graduate groups embody the collaborative spirit of discovery at UC Davis by bringing together scholars from different areas of study who share common research interests, which means many of our faculty belong to more than one graduate program.

  • Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
  • Shota Atsumi | Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering 
    Peter Beal | Nucleic acids chemical biology
    Sheila David | Chemical biology of DNA repair
    Oliver Fiehn | Mass spectrometry and computation chemistry for metabolomics
    Andrew Fisher | Protein structure-function and X-ray crystallography
    Christopher Fraser | Cellular and viral mRNA translation in humans
    Bruce Hammock | Biological chemistry of regulatory lipids, medicinal chemistry
    David Segal | Genome engineering tools and therapeutics
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Randy Carney | Nanoplasmonics, Raman spectroscopy/SERS, exosomes, cancer diagnostics
    Kit Lam | Lymphoma, targeted therapy for cancer, molecular imaging, drug development and combinatorial chemistry
    Angelique Louie | Molecular imaging and novel imaging probes
    Matthew Paszek | Investigating how signaling patterns emerge from spatial arrangements outside of thermodynamic equilibrium and what role mechanical forces and biophysical interactions play in organizing biomolecules at molecular length scales
    Cheemeng Tan Synthetic biology, artificial cellular systems, gene regulation, cellular heterogeneity, antibiotic treatment
    Aijun Wang | Stem cells, biomaterials, tissue regeneration, vascular disease, birth defects
     
  • Biophysics
  • James Ames | Biophysical chemistry and structural biology
    James Letts | Membrane protein electron transport complexes in bioenergetics and immunity
    Justin Siegel | Computational enzyme design
    Cheemeng Tan Synthetic biology, artificial cellular systems, gene regulation, cellular heterogeneity, antibiotic treatment
    Igor Vorobyov | Molecular modeling and simulations of molecular systems
  • Chemistry
  • James Ames | Biophysical chemistry and structural biology
    Shota Atsumi | Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering
    Peter Beal | Nucleic acids chemical biology
    Xi Chen | Chemical biology/glycoscience
    Sheila David | Chemical biology of DNA repair
    Oliver Fiehn | Mass spectrometry and computation chemistry for metabolomics
    Andrew Fisher | Protein structure-function and X-ray crystallography
    Alec H. FollmerAdvancing the frontiers of metalloenzymology by designing innovative approaches to understand the non-equilibrium dynamics that drive the catalytic processes of metal-containing enzymes
    Annaliese Franz | Organic synthesis, catalysis, and biofuels
    Marie Heffern | Bioinorganic chemistry in nutrition and diseases, chemical biology and imaging
    Kit Lam | Lymphoma, targeted therapy for cancer, molecular imaging, drug development and combinatorial chemistry
    Carlito Lebrilla | Bioanalytical mass spectrometry
    Angelique Louie | Molecular imaging and novel imaging probes
    Elizabeth Neumann | Understanding the molecular and cellular architecture behind neurological diseases
    David Olson | Organic synthesis and chemical neuroscience
    Jared Shaw | Synthetic methods, natural products, chemical biology
    Justin Siegel | Computational enzyme design
    Dean Tantillo  | Theoretical organic chemistry, natural products biosynthesis
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology
  • Sheila David | Chemical biology of DNA repair
    Oliver Fiehn | Mass spectrometry and computation chemistry for metabolomics
    Bruce Hammock | Biological chemistry of regulatory lipids, medicinal chemistry
    Kit Lam | Lymphoma, targeted therapy for cancer, molecular imaging, drug development and combinatorial chemistry
    David Segal | Genome engineering tools and therapeutics
    Aijun Wang | Stem cells, biomaterials, tissue regeneration, vascular disease, birth defects
    Heike Wulff | Design of potassium channel modulators
  • Integrative Genetics and Genomics
  • Randy Carney | Nanoplasmonics, Raman spectroscopy/SERS, exosomes, cancer diagnostics
    David Segal | Genome engineering tools and therapeutics
    Nitzan Shabek | Molecular mechanisms of signaling pathways and their regulation by proteolytic systems
    Cheemeng Tan Synthetic biology, artificial cellular systems, gene regulation, cellular heterogeneity, antibiotic treatment

 

Faculty Trainers, please remember to complete the mentorship survey annually! Please submit information regarding at least one mentorship based workshop/training/activity each academic year here