Kevan M. Shokat, Ph.D.
Kevan M. Shokat is currently an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California at San Francisco and Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.
He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Reed College in 1986, his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at UC Berkeley with Professor Peter Schultz and carried out post-doctoral work in cellular immunology at Stanford University with Professor Chris Goodnow.
Kevan’s research group is focused on the discovery of new small molecule tools and drug candidates targeting protein/lipid kinases, GTPases, and RNA helicases. His laboratory utilizes the tools of synthetic organic chemistry, protein engineering, structural biology, biochemistry and cell biology.
He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences (2010), the National Academy of Medicine (2011), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011). In 2023 he was awarded the Vollum Prize from Reed College, the National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery and the Sjöberg Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for ‘discoveries that enable the inhibition of mutated K-Ras in cancer treatment’ and the Heath Memorial Award Lecture, from MD Anderson Cancer Center.
In 2024, he was awarded the Edward E. Smissman Award by the ACS Medicinal Chemistry division and the Hope Funds Award of Excellence for Basic Science.
In 2025, he delivered The Harvey Lecture at The Rockefeller University in New York City and was awarded the NCI Alfred G. Knudson Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Genetics in addition to The Therapeutic Achievement Award for pioneering work in the field of chemical biology/genetics from Lund University, Sweden and the Jacob and Louise Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine.
He was awarded the 2026 Centenary Award from The Biochemical Society. He has commercialized discoveries from his laboratory through co-founding several biotechnology companies including Intellikine, Araxes, Wellspring Biosciences, Kura Oncology, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Montara Therapeutics, Revolution Medicines, Erasca and Kumquat Biosciences.
Elizabeth Villa, Ph.D
Elizabeth Villa is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator and Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Fulbright Fellow and completed postdoctoral training as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich.
Recruited to UC San Diego in 2014, Dr. Villa received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award to develop cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and related technological and computational advances for structural cell biology. She was named a Pew Scholar in 2017 and became an HHMI Investigator in 2021.
The Villa Lab develops and applies cutting-edge tools in cryo-electron microscopy and tomography, cell biophysics, computational analysis, and integrative modeling to visualize macromolecular complexes in their native cellular environments.
These approaches enable the team to determine molecular structures, interactions, and functional context directly within cells. Research in the lab focuses on four major areas: (1) uncovering fundamental cellular processes in bacteria, including how jumbo bacteriophage infection creates previously unrecognized bacterial compartments and cytoskeletal systems; (2) investigating the molecular architecture of the nuclear periphery, including nuclear pore complex dynamics, communication between the cytoskeleton and nucleus, and genome organization at the nuclear envelope; (3) defining the in situ molecular networks of LRRK2, a key protein implicated in Parkinson’s disease; and (4) investigating biomolecular phase separation across cellular contexts, including bacteria, the nucleus, and the secretory pathway.
Through these efforts, the lab seeks to advance quantitative cell biology and reveal how molecular organization drives cellular function in health and disease.
Sandra Gabelli
Sandra Gabelli is the Global Head of Protein and Structural Chemistry at Merck. Sandra leads one of the most strategically impactful organizations in the company—teams that deploy cutting‑edge structural biology, biophysics, and mechanistic protein science to advance drug discovery and development. Under her leadership, these groups illuminate the molecular basis of therapeutic action: how targets are engaged, how ligands interact at atomic resolution, and how candidate therapeutics behave within complex biological environments.
Sandra’s path to Merck is rooted in a distinguished academic career. Before joining industry, she served as a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where she established a widely respected research program in structural enzymology and mechanistic biochemistry. Her work there not only expanded fundamental understanding of protein function but also helped train the next generation of scientists who now populate laboratories around the world.
Across both academia and industry, Sandra has been a consistent advocate for leveraging the power of structure—whether to uncover how molecular switches operate, to decode allosteric networks, or to translate mechanistic insights into therapeutic opportunity.
Dr. Derek Lowe
Derek Lowe has been doing research in the biopharma industry since 1989, when he joined Schering-Plough after finishing his PhD and postdoctoral work. He worked on CNS targets until moving to Bayer, where he concentrated on metabolic and oncology research. In 2007 he moved to Vertex, where he worked on antibacterial, antiviral, and oncology targets with a larger focus on new drug discovery technologies. Since 2017 he has been doing chemical biology work at Novartis.
He is also well-known for his blog “In the Pipeline”, which has been running continuously since 2002 and which covers a variety of scientific, chemical, drug discovery, and pharma-industry topics.
James Fraser
James Fraser studied Biology as an undergraduate at McGill University. His Ph.D. work at UC Berkeley under Dr. Tom Alber focused on the relationship between protein conformational dynamics and enzymatic catalysis. He moved to UCSF to start his lab in 2011. Currently, Professor Fraser is Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. His work spans across various disciplines, including structural biology, deep mutational scanning, and drug discovery. Fraser is also known for his commitment to open science and served on the board of ASAPbio for many years.
Stephen K. Burley
Stephen Kevin Burley, M.D., D.Phil. is an expert in data science and bioinformatics, structural biology, and structure-guided drug discovery. He is the Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank (RCSB.org). Within Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey he holds the rank of University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair; and serves as Interim Director of the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory; Founding Director of the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine; Tenured Member of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and Cancer Pharmacology Research Program Co-Leader within the Rutgers Cancer Institute. Burley’s previous roles were Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar, Eli Lilly and Co.; Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President for Research, SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Furlaud Chaired Professor, The Rockefeller University; and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His degrees include M.D. -Harvard Medical School; D.Phil. -Oxford University; and B.Sc. (Physics) and Doctor of Science (Honoris causa) -Western University. As a member of the American Crystallographic Association(ACA) since 1989 and ACA Fellow (elected 2020), Burley has published extensively in structural biology; structure-guided drug discovery; data science, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence/machine learning; and clinical oncology.
Dr. Stephen Harrison
Stephen C. Harrison is Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Professor of Basic Medical Sciences, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He obtained his B.A. from Harvard in 1963 and his Ph.D. (Biophysics) from Harvard in 1968. He has served on the Harvard faculty since 1971. Between 1972 and 1996, he was Chair of the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences, Harvard’s undergraduate program in biochemistry; he was Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Faculty of Arts & Sciences) from 1988-1992, and Acting Chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (Harvard Medical School) from 2009-2012.