New Look--And New Faces!

Welcome to the new look for the Koehler Lab website!

In order to better share our science with our fellow scientists and curious members of our wider community, we have streamlined our page and updated our content. We hope you'll take the time to click around to see what's new, but we wanted to be sure to start with some new faces in the lab!

Early this year we welcomed post doctoral associate Dr. Brice Curtin. Brice received his PhD in chemistry from UCLA in 2017. His thesis work, which focused on synthetic peptidomimetics to target anti-apoptotic protein-protein interactions, was conducted under Dr. Partick Harran. He will be joining the MYC-focused team, where we are eager to see him leverage his knowledge of organic chemistry and protein-protein interactions. Welcome, Brice!

Welcome, to Catherine Henry, a graduate student in Biological Engineering at MIT!  Catherine received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016 and joins us from a year spent working at the Nation Cancer Institute (NCI) on in vitro models for colorectal cancer. She will be joining the existing team focused on oncogenic transcription factors in prostate cancer, and is very interested in developing the next generation of chemical technologies for tackling tough targets.

And last, but certainly not least, welcome to our littlest yet of young members, Sebastián Arturo Jensen Vegas, born on July 26th and waving hello in his work onesie. As you can see, the rest of the Koehler-Vegas subgroup is pleased to meet him and enjoying his company.

It should also be said that all of these 'hellos' have also meant we've recently said 'good luck!' to several members moving on from the lab to new positions. Good luck to those who have recently moved on: Dr. Helen Evans to ImmunoGen, Dr. Dave Freeman to Kronos Bio, Kimia Ziadkhanpour to Mount Sinai. As well as good luck to our recently departed visiting students now finishing up their theses at their home institutions: Jasmin Krüll, MS at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen (Germany) and Rui Traquete at Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Portugal).

Stay tuned for more updates on news from the Koehler Lab!

Welcome Helen, Thijs, and baby Arabella!

Archive from July 2015

The lab welcomes Dr. Helen Evans, a synthetic chemistry postdoc who comes to us from the Ritter Lab and the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard. Helen is working on medicinal chemistry related to small molecules that modulate deregulated transcription in prostate cancer, with emphasis on natural products. We also welcome Thijs Wildschut, a visiting Master's student from Utrecht University. Thijs is part of a program focused on cancer, stem cells, and developmental biology, making him a perfect fit for our team focused on Myc-mediated transcription. Finally, we welcome another young member, Arabella Josefine Vegas, born on July 24th. Little Arabella is letting mom work on grant applications and lecture materials for 20.320 over the summer and steering clear of her toddler brothers Nico and Max.

Arabella Josefine Vegas

Welcome Andrew, Rohit, and the Vegas twins!

Archive from January 2014

The Koehler lab welcomed several new members at the start of the year, including two new students and a couple of babies.

Andrew Chen, a graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, joins us from Cornell University’s undergraduate program in Biological Engineering. Andrew will be working on novel approaches to targeting Myc-associated transcriptional complexes. Prior to MIT, Andrew spent time as a Research Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Rohit Thummalapali, an MD student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, comes to us from Yale University where his studies focused on Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Rohit has joined a collaborative project involving the Bernstein and Suva labs at MGH aimed at developing probes for a core transcription factor network and chromatin-modifying enzymes involved in epigenetic reprogramming of glioblastoma cancer stem cells.

Finally, we welcome our two youngest members of the group, Nico Emmerich Sandoval Vegas and Maximo Aaron Torrealba Vegas. Angela delivered Nico and Max on January 22nd. The boys keep mom busy and occasionally make appearances at the Koch in their double stroller.