Directory - Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund

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David J. Julius, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Columbia University

Project Title: Approaches to isolating a gene encoding a mammalian serotonin receptor

Madeleine S. Junkins, Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Yale University

Project Title: Uncovering the principles of immune sensing within the central nervous system

Dr. Madeleine Junkins is intrigued by brain-body interactions and how this relationship enables complex behaviors and functions. During her graduate research she investigated thirst suppression in ground squirrels, a hibernating species that can forgo water for months. During her fellowship, Junkins will interrogate collaborative immune-neural responses to illness.

During her thesis research in Dr. Elena Gracheva’s lab at Yale University, Junkins demonstrated that a specialized subset of neurons are activated at low temperatures during hibernation and promotes the release of a hormone that tells the body to hold onto water. Additionally, she found that thirst-sensing neurons in specialized brain areas called the circumventricular organs are functionally suppressed during hibernation. Collectively, Junkins’ research provided a major leap forward for understanding the neural regulation of thirst suppression during hibernation.

As a postdoc in Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov’s lab at Yale, Dr. Junkins will now study how our immune and neural systems collaborate to engage defenses when we’re sick. She will uncover the molecular and cellular components that transform inflammatory signals into neural activity. By manipulating the communication between the immune and neural systems during inflammation, Junkins will provide insight into how these two major body systems interact. This understanding could lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets for neuroimmune disorders.

Image of Alisa K. Kabcenell-Waterman, Ph.D.

Alisa K. Kabcenell-Waterman, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Yale University

Project Title: Role of a Ras-like protein in yeast secretion

Neil Kabrun, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine

Project Title: Role of c-rel in development and oncogenesis

Raymond OR. Kaempfer, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard University

Project Title: Structure of ribosomes

Shoshanna C. Kahne, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of Washington

Project Title: Investigation of immune systems in multicellular bacteria

Dr. Shoshanna Kahne is interested in bacterial pathways and determining how they change in response to their environment. From Mycobacterium tuberculosis to cyanobacteria, Kahne’s research is creating powerful insights with implications ranging from human disease to environmental impacts.

Kahne’s Ph.D. research in Dr. Heran Darwin’s lab at NYU focused on how proteins are marked for breakdown in the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Kahne discovered a protein that regulates marking an important vitamin-making enzyme for degradation in response to the abundance of the vitamin it helps synthesize. Her findings could help identify new ways to treat this deadly disease.

Now, in Dr. Alex Meeske’s lab at the University of Washington, Kahne will study how cyanobacteria defend themselves against infection by viruses. She is investigating species in the order Nostocales and has identified numerous and diverse potential defense systems in their genomes.

Kahne will test Nostocales hosts against diverse viruses to characterize how they succeed or fail to prevent infection. This work may reveal strategies to harness useful qualities of Nostocales, such as their abilities to fix atmospheric carbon and nitrogen, as well as combat their toxic overgrowths which can poison plants, animals, and humans.

Roarke A. Kamber, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Stanford University

Project Title: Mechanistic dissection of mTOR and autophagy gene function in phagocytosis

Daphne Kamely, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Cancer Research UK (CRUK)

Project Title: Transformation of human diploid fibroblasts by chemical carcinogens

Martin Kampmann, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, San Francisco

Project Title: Genetic interaction mapping and mechanisms of human host cell pathways exploited by endoplasmic reticulum-trafficking toxins, with a focus on retrotranslation

Satwik Kamtekar, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Yale University

Project Title: Crystallographic studies of DNA-resolvase complexes

Roland Kanaar, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, Berkeley

Project Title: Development of a cell-free general recombination system

Chanhee Kang, Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Brigham and Women's Hospital and /
Harvard University Medical School

Project Title: Elucidation of senescence regulatory networks using unbiased genetic screens

Jinsuk Kang, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology

Project Title: The roles of TETs in pluripotency and early embryogenesis

Allison P. Kann, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard University

Project Title: How to build (and rebuild) an animal

Many animals are capable of whole-body regeneration, enabling the regrowth of missing structures to their original size and shape after major amputation. Most studies investigating this phenomenon have focused on the transcriptional control of differentiation from adult pluripotent stem cells. However, Dr. Allison Kann predicts that an important, yet underappreciated, aspect of regeneration is the role of cell adhesion. Regeneration from stem cells requires free progenitor cells to unite and integrate into multicellular tissues and organs. Dr. Kann will use Hofstenia miamia, a genetically tractable invertebrate model system to investigate the disassembly, formation, and remodeling of cellular junctions during regeneration. Kann will conduct these studies in Dr. Mansi Srivastava’s lab at Harvard University. These studies will reveal new principles of regeneration and identify mechanisms that cells use to converge into multicellular structures.

As a graduate student in Dr. Robert Krauss’ lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Kann investigated the activation of muscle stem cells. She identified that cytoskeletal regulation is a key driver of muscle stem cell fate decisions and demonstrated how stem cells transduce injury signals into activation. With her background in adult stem cell biology, Dr. Kann is now ready to investigate how cellular interactions between progenitor cells regulate organismal regeneration.

Harris S. Kaplan, Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard University

Project Title: Functional development of social behavior circuits

Mammalian social behaviors change dramatically over the lifespan: infants rely on their mothers for food and warmth, adolescents engage each other in social play, and adults mate and parent. This highly conserved social niche trajectory consists of dynamic motivational drives and behavioral repertoires and co-occurs alongside rapid changes in brain organization. However, it remains unclear how developmental changes in behavior result from transformations of the underlying brain circuits.
As a postdoctoral fellow in Catherine Dulac‚Äôs lab, I am dissecting these developmental transitions in mammalian brain and behavior. Focusing on the mouse hypothalamus, I am charting the coordinated emergence of transcriptional cell-type identities, spontaneous and stimulus-evoked neuronal activity patterns, and corresponding changes in behavior. Further, I am exploring the robustness and plasticity of these trajectories by manipulating the animal‚Äôs sensory and social rearing environment. This work will provide novel insights into the developmental processes that build animal behavior.

Heidi B. Kaplan, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Stanford University

Project Title: Developmental regulation of an A-factor-dependent gene in Myxococcus

Joshua M. Kaplan, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Project Title: Mechanosensory cell function in C. elegans

Avnish Kapoor, Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Project Title: Delineate mechanisms of oncogenic KRAS independent effector pathways of pancreatic cancer

Eva P. Karasmanis, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, San Diego

Project Title: Cellular regulation of cargo motility

David A. Karnofsky, M.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Medical Research Council (MRC),UKRI

Project Title: Cancer chemotherapy

Robert W. Karp, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of Cambridge, England

Project Title: Molecular cloning of the Adh locus of D. melanogaster

Timothy L. Karr, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, San Francisco

Project Title: Organization of the cell cytoplasm

Kathleen M. Karrer, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Indiana University

Project Title: Nuclear proteins of Drosophila pole cells

Maya M. Kasowski, M.D., Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Stanford University

Project Title: Variation in chromosomal interactions in 10 human populations

A lesson of the genome wide association study (GWAS) era is that _x000D_
approximately 90% of causal disease variants influence gene expression. Mapping genetic variants that influence molecular-level phenotypes has elucidated various mechanisms underlying gene expression diversity. Recently, we showed that genetic variants coordinate histone modifications at sites of intra-chromosomal interaction, thereby providing a mechanism for variation in the activity of regulatory elements that lack local sequence variation [15]. We hypothesize that genetic variants influence distal sites by affecting the stability of chromosomal contacts (“loops”) and that this is a common mechanism for gene expression variation. The_x000D_
location of loops is sequence-specific, mediated by transcription factors (TFs) that bind specific DNA motifs. Genetic variants that disrupt binding sites could therefore be expected to destabilize loops and prevent enhancer-promoter contacts. We propose to map genetic variants affecting chromosomal interactions in order to characterize this novel mechanism for gene expression diversity. We will employ an efficient pooling strategy, which will enable us to map variants in an expanded set of 1000 people belonging to 10 populations. We will leverage the genetic loci we identify to fine-map GWAS hits and discover causal variants that confer disease risk through effects on 3D genome architecture.

David B. Kastner, M.D., Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, San Francisco

Project Title: Neural activity underlying individual variability in spatial decisions

Memory informs how animals interact with the world. It provides an expectation of the future based upon past experience. With navigation, animals draw upon a memory of their surroundings to inform their decisions. The hippocampus is critical for spatial decision-making by providing multiple ways to recall surroundings. Yet, why the hippocampus has multiple recall strategies remains unknown. To test the hypothesis that different recall strategies provide the substrate for individual variability, I will explore the behavior and hippocampal neural activity of both male and female rats during different spatial tasks. Beyond just recording the differences between animals, I will also specifically block hippocampal recall activity to determine their necessity for individual behavior. Studying individual decision-making will explore the range of neural computations that are consistent with normal functioning, and further our understanding of the complex relationship between the internal representation of the world and its external manifestations

Alexander Katsov, Ph.D. HHMI-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Rockefeller University

Project Title: Functional maturation of the nervous system in the nematode C. elegans

Jon R. Katze, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Yale University

Project Title: Structure of the coat protein of the f2 phage of E. coli

Stephen J. Kaufman, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Project Title: Amino acid sequence of myeloma immunoglobulins

Lawrence M. Kauvar, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

California Institute of Technology

Project Title: Genetic dissection of the neuromuscular junction

Justus M. Kebschull, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Stanford University

Project Title: Investigating cell type and brain circuit evolution in the cerebellum

Brain circuits and the neuronal cell types that form them are not static over evolutionary time. Rather, they cause and reflect the changing repertoire of animal behavior. How circuits and cell types change from their ancestral state to support novel behaviors during evolution, therefore, gives us important clues as to their current function. In my project, I will investigate the interaction between the cerebellum and the rest of the brain from this evolutionary angle by studying the progressive expansion and elaboration of the deep cerebellar nuclei, the output pathway of the cerebellum. I will profile transcriptional and protectional cell types of the DCN across species to probe changes in the DCN over deep evolutionary time. I will then integrate this dataset with developmental trajectories of the identified cell types in mouse, to provide mechanistic insight into how brain regions specialize on the level of single cells and circuit wiring to support new functions over the course of evolution.

James L. Keck, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard University

Project Title: Structure and function of the RecQ helicase

James J. Keirns, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Yale University

Project Title: Role of adenyl cyclase in the excitation of vertebrate photoreceptors

Gregory Kellogg, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard Medical School

Project Title: Interaction of cyclophilin, CsA and calcineurin

C. Lindley Kemp, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of Geneva

Project Title: Ultrastructural behavior of chromosomes

Jon A. Kenniston, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of Pennsylvania

Project Title: Investigating dynamin as a model for functionality important low-affinity PH domain/phosphoinositide interactions

Joan L. L. Kent, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Project Title: Biosynthesis of bacterial lipopolysaccharides

Cynthia J. Kenyon, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Medical Research Council (MRC),UKRI

Project Title: Development of genetic mosaic analysis in C. elegans

Daniel S. Kessler, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard University

Project Title: Growth factor-regulated effectors of pattern formation

Renat N. Khaliullin, Ph.D. Ludwig Cancer Research-Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, San Diego

Project Title: Mechanics of contractile ring constriction

Amy A. Kiger, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Harvard Medical School

Project Title: Functional genomic screen for Wnt pathway members

Hui Sun Kim, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

University of California, Berkeley

Project Title: Thermophilic reductase dynamics and nuclear tunneling

Taekyung Kim, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Boston Children's Hospital

Project Title: Signaling pathway by L type Ca2+ channel

Seyun Kim, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Johns Hopkins University

Project Title: The role for nuclear GAPDH in the regulation of p300/p53 activation

Hyun-Eui Kim, Ph.D. Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Project Title: Study of relationship between metabolism and protein homeostasis in neurodegenerative diseases

In the lab of Andrew Dillin, I study the mechanism of proteotoxicity in age-onset neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer¬ís and Huntington¬ís. To better understand how protein homeostasis plays a role in these diseases, I use animal model systems ¬ó such as c. elegans and mice ¬ó that express toxic proteins including the amyloid beta peptide (Alzheimer’s) or poly-glutamate protein (Huntington’s).

I was born in Seoul, Korea. My desire to become a¬† good scientist outweighed anxiety over separating from my family, so I moved to the U.S, obtaining my PhD in biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center. There, I studied the mechanism of cell death and apoptosis, in particularly in various cancer cells. For my postdoc career, I wanted to try new systems to learn more of biology and use my biochemistry expertise. I chose a genetics lab where I can work with live animals and develop a better understanding of pathology in animal model systems, rather than just in groups of cells. I am hopeful that my basic science findings can turn into therapeutic tools. Outside of work, I play piano and paint, and enjoy walking my little dog on the beautiful San Diego beach.