Experience

Matrubials Inc.

• United States
• Biotechnology Research
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

  • Jul 2020 - 3 years 6 months

  Davis, California, United States I'm leading efforts at Matrubials to develop milk-inspired therapies for infectious diseases, starting with women's health and skin health. A select group of protective molecules from milk can be diverted into applications for reducing the impact of drug-resistant infections, a global health care threat.



University of California, Davis

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Project Scientist and Associate Director at FFHI (Microbial Programs)

  • Apr 2014 - Aug 2022

  Davis, CA In my role as the Associate Director at the Foods for Health Institute, UC Davis, I collaborated with scientists of the Milk Bioactives Program at UC Davis towards the identification of specific peptide moieties from milk that serve as antibacterial agents and focus on the roles of human milk oligosaccharides relevant to altering NEC associated pathogenesis in preterm infants.



Genentech

• United States
• Biotechnology Research
• 700 & Above Employee

• Senior Bioassay Developer

  • Sep 2013 - Mar 2014

  Vacaville, CA

• Senior Infectious Diseases Researcher

  • Jun 2010 - Aug 2013

  South San Francisco, CA As a Senior Researcher in the Department of Infectious Diseases (Microbial Pathogenesis), I have been involved in the identification of drug targets in pathogenic bacteria and their genetic validation in vitro and in infection model systems. My work has led to the progression of one of our molecules as an Early Stage Research project for drug discovery at the company, while we are continuing to pursue many other proteins for the same. It has been a very fruitful extension of my doctoral and… Show more As a Senior Researcher in the Department of Infectious Diseases (Microbial Pathogenesis), I have been involved in the identification of drug targets in pathogenic bacteria and their genetic validation in vitro and in infection model systems. My work has led to the progression of one of our molecules as an Early Stage Research project for drug discovery at the company, while we are continuing to pursue many other proteins for the same. It has been a very fruitful extension of my doctoral and post-doctoral research experiences and I have been able to gather first -hand experience of how efficiently basic bench research can have translational opportunities into therapeutics. My initial work here in developing tools aimed at modifying clinically relevant strains to make them easily genetically manipulable was published in mBio in 2012



Columbia University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Postdoctoral Scientist

  • Jun 2006 - Nov 2009

  New York, NY During my postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Dworkin (Department of Microbiology and Immunology), I focused on muropeptide mediated signaling in dormant and growing bacterial cells. I have shown that muropeptides shed by growing bacteria are sensed by dormant bacteria allowing them to exit from their inactive states. Such a mechanism absolutely requires a eukaryotic-like ser/thr kinase in the model organism Bacillus subtilis. Activation mediated by muropeptides causes… Show more During my postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Dworkin (Department of Microbiology and Immunology), I focused on muropeptide mediated signaling in dormant and growing bacterial cells. I have shown that muropeptides shed by growing bacteria are sensed by dormant bacteria allowing them to exit from their inactive states. Such a mechanism absolutely requires a eukaryotic-like ser/thr kinase in the model organism Bacillus subtilis. Activation mediated by muropeptides causes phosphorylation of a previously identified kinase target, EF-G in dormant cells transitioning into growing cells as well as in growing cells subjected to muropeptide induction. This work for the first time led to the identification of a physiological ligand that can trigger the exit from dormancy. Dormant pathogenic microbes need to resuscitate for them to be able to establish infection and pathogenicity, and thus our findings open up many new areas of investigation. The important discovery of muropeptide mediated ser/thr kinase requiring exit from dormancy was published in Cell and subsequently the observations with effects in growing cells were published in Molecular Microbiology in addition to review articles in Current Biology and Nature Reviews Microbiology. Show less



Hillman Cancer Center

• Postdoctoral Associate

  • Jun 2005 - May 2006

  Pittsburgh, PA During my short postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Drs. Yuan Chang and Patrick Moore in the Department of Molecular Virology, I focused on elucidating molecular mechanisms of Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated herpes virus infection. Along with other researchers in the laboratory, I showed that KSHV LANA1 Mimics EBV EBNA1 Immune Evasion through central repeat domain effects on protein processing and this work was published in the Journal of Virology