2nd Transatlantic ECI GPCR Symposium

David studied chemistry and biology at Union College before receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University. He completed his postdoctoral training in neuroscience at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. David joined the faculty at UC Davis in 2015, where he established a research program at the interface of chemistry and neuroscience. His research focuses on understanding how small molecules influence neural plasticity, learning, memory, and mood. In 2019, he co-founded Delix Therapeutics—a company developing non-hallucinogenic analogs of psychedelics for treating a variety of brain disorders.

Miriam obtained her PhD at the ETH Zurich in 2013 and then joined Kay Grünewald’s group at the University of Oxford as a postdoc. In 2014, she moved to the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where she was as a postdoc in the group of Prof. Mark von Zastrow. Miriam started her own research group in summer 2019, and their work aims to understand how GPCRs function in the cellular context and more specifically, how receptors in different cellular organelles translate ligand-binding into precise signaling outcomes.

Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Anesthesia at UCSF. Aashish received his BA in Biology and Chemistry from Washington University in St Louis and his MD/PhD from Stanford University. Aashish was named a Pew, Searle, Klingenstein, Vallee and Mallinckrodt Scholar, is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, and is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award.

Jana Selent is an Associate Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University and a Group Leader at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain. She is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that drive the complex functionalities of GPCRs using molecular dynamics simulation. In this line, her group coordinates a community-driven initiative that aims to uncover the dynamics of the entire 3D-GPCRome (www.gpcrmd.org). Currently, she is also the vice-chair of the ERNEST cost action to promote interdisciplinary research and to establish the groundwork for a holistic map of signal transduction.

JoAnn is professor of Pharmacology at UC San Diego School Medicine, Department of Pharmacology. She earned her PhD and MBA at UC San Diego and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco. She is best known for her discoveries of how cellular responses are regulated by GPCRs in the context of vascular inflammation and cancer. Dr. Trejo’s work has established new paradigms for how GPCRs drive inflammatory signaling from subcellular compartments. She is also a recognized leader for her work embracing mentorship, and her effective strategies to enhance diversity of the biomedical workforce and inclusive excellence. In 2020, JoAnn was elected as an American Society for Cell Biology Fellow and 100 Inspiring Hispanic / Latinx Scientists in America and elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.

Martha works on elucidating the molecular details of how arrestins interact with GPCRs with the ultimate goal of understanding the complex functional versatility of the arrestins. She began these studies as a doctoral student in Portland, Oregon USA, and from 2013-2021 she led her own research group at the Charité Medical University in Berlin. A few years ago Martha founded an international consortium, the European Research Network on Signal Transduction (ERNEST) that is funded by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). In November 2021, Martha joined ISAR Bioscience near Munich, Germany as Director of the new GPCR Signalling Platform.

Sri is a biologist that has helped build technologies, labs, and companies in synthetic biology, functional genomics, and bioinformatics over the last 20 years. He is passionate about developing more rational ways to understand and engineer biology. Sri is a co-founder at Octant and an Associate Professor at UCLA in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, where his lab has worked on building large-scale ways of empirically exploring questions in protein biochemistry, human genetic variation, gene regulation, chemical biology, synthetic biology, and functional genomics. Sri previously worked at the Wyss Institute and Harvard, where he built numerous technologies in gene synthesis, DNA information storage, gene editing, and large-scale multiplexed assays. He helped build Gen9, a gene synthesis company, as a member of the SAB and was the first employee of Joule Unlimited, an engineered algal biofuel company. He is a Searle Scholar (2015), NIH New Innovator (2014), and received his ScD in Biological Engineering at MIT and BS in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley.

Chris de Graaf has over 16 years of experience as computational chemist in GPCR drug discovery research, with more than 140 publications (June 2022). Dr. Chris de Graaf is Senior Director and Head of Computational Chemistry at Sosei Heptares (www.soseiheptares.com). Following PhD studies in computational medicinal chemistry and molecular toxicology at VU University Amsterdam in 2006, Dr. De Graaf worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Strasbourg and AstraZeneca on the development and application of novel GPCR structural modeling and virtual ligand screening techniques. In 2009, Chris de Graaf obtained a NWO Veni grant to develop a research line in the computational prediction of structural protein–ligand interactions and was appointed Assistant Professor in the Division Medicinal Chemistry at VU University Amsterdam. Since 2018 Chris de Graaf is Head of Computational Chemistry at Sosei Heptares, where he is leading the development and application of computer-aided drug discovery approaches across the GPCRome.