James Fraser, PhD
Chair and Ernest L. Prien Professor Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences
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University of California, San Francisco
IMB Seminar Series
Apr 21, 2026
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4:00 pm
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Willamette 110
In a post-"AlphaFold has solved structure prediction" world, our lab is obsessed with the concept of statistical structural biology. First, we collect large datasets (X-ray fragment screens from 1000s of individual crystals) and use new statistical approaches to identify small molecule binders. This inspires new inhibitors, allosteric modulators, and enzyme design strategies. Second, we examine how experimental information in X-ray crystallography and CryoEM encodes statistical distributions of conformations. This inspires software (e.g. qFit) that reveals hidden conformations and new guidance frameworks for diffusion models. Our work reveals the extent of memorization in current models and suggests experiments to extract even more information for improved training. These two statistical approaches to structural biology are synergistic in examining many aspects of biological mechanism. A current focus is the promiscuity of ligand binding in drug metabolizing proteins, as part of the OpenADMET consortium.
Jeffrey Tabor, PhD
Professor of Bioengineering & BioSciences
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Rice University
IMB Seminar Series
Apr 28, 2026
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12:00 pm
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Knight Campus Beetham Family Seminar Room
Genetically engineered bacteria have tremendous potential to serve as next generation diagnostics and therapeutics. Major challenges include identifying genetic pathways that enable bacteria to detect specific biomarkers, optimizing the production and secretion of therapeutic molecules, and achieving long-term residence and function of engineered bacteria in the body. Our group is addressing these challenges by identifying bacterial two-component regulatory systems that sense relevant biomarkers, engineering them to work in distant organisms, and linking them to the production of useful reporter or therapeutic genes. We have taken this approach to engineer bacteria that can sense inflammation in colitis and ileitis models. In recent work, we have also engineered bacteria to secrete a small molecule metabolite that suppresses hunger and combats obesity linked phenotypes. In this seminar, I will discuss these efforts and remaining challenges to delivering on the promise of engineered bacteria that sense and treat disease.
Jennifer Bridwell-Rabb, PhD
Associate Professor of Chemistry
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University of Michigan
IMB Seminar Series
May 5, 2026
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4:00 pm
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Willamette 110
One of Nature’s underexplored strategies for facilitating C–H bond functionalization involves the class of Rieske Oxygenases. These enzymes use a high valent Fe-based oxidant to facilitate a diverse set of powerful and specific transformations, including monooxygenation, dioxygenation, and sequential monooxygenation reactions. This chemistry is vital to a number of biosynthetic and degradative pathways and thus, these enzymes have been recognized for their potential use in building complex natural products and degrading environmental pollutants. However, the practical applicability of Rieske Oxygenases is limited by a gap in knowledge regarding the structure–function relationships in this class of enzymes. Here, I will detail our progress towards identifying the architectural motifs that Rieske Oxygenases employ to dictate site-selectivity, substrate specificity, and reaction outcome. Collectively, this work provides a framework for structurally reprogramming a Rieske oxygenase for use as a biocatalyst.
Eileen Kennedy, PhD
Division Chair, Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry; Distinguished Professor
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Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
IMB Seminar Series
May 12, 2026
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12:00 pm
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Knight Campus Beetham Family Seminar Room
My research program is centered on developing synthetic modulators of allosteric and spatiotemporal regulation of kinases in cells using a chemical biology approach. From a chemical standpoint, we have developed synthetic strategies to generate biologically active beta-turn mimics and constrained alpha-helical scaffolds that target PPI interfaces involved in protein kinase regulation. These projects have laid the foundation for my group to now pursue allosteric inhibition or spatiotemporal disruption of kinases within a cellular context. Going forward, we are partly chemistry-focused where we explore different synthetic strategies to constrain peptide-based scaffolds with different secondary structures including loops, beta sheets and entities that contain two or more secondary structural elements. These compounds can be used to target kinases as well as other well-defined protein-protein interfaces that mediate protein complex formation. We are also focused on taking a more in-depth approach to studying the effectiveness of our compounds in different disease model systems. I will present work on current projects targeting LRRK2 in Parkinson’s and the WASF3 regulatory complex in cancer.
Julie Theriot, PhD
Chief Scientific Advisor
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Allen Institute
George Streisinger Memorial Lecture Series
May 26, 2026
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3:00 pm
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Knight Campus Beetham Family Seminar Room
Julie Theriot attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning dual B. S. degrees in physics and biology. She completed her Ph.D. in cell biology at the University of California at San Francisco, and then returned to Cambridge as a Whitehead Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She joined the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997, with appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Julie is currently a Professor at the University of Washington, Department of Biology, a continuing HHMI Investigator, and as Chief Scientist at the Allen Institute for Cell Science.The experimental work of her research group focuses on quantitative measurement of the dynamic and mechanical behavior of structural components in living cells, exploring the molecular and biophysical mechanisms of various forms of cell motility and shape determination across a variety of eukaryotic and bacterial cell types. Julie has won numerous awards for her research, including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She has also received multiple teaching awards from both M. D. and Ph. D. students at Stanford. Julie is a coauthor of the textbook “Physical Biology of the Cell.”
Karla Kirkegaard, PhD
Violetta L. Horton Research Professor of Genetics
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Stanford University School of Medicine
George Streisinger Memorial Lecture Series
May 27, 2026
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11:00 am
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Knight Campus Beetham Family Seminar Room
Karla Kirkegaard, Ph.D., is the Violetta L. Horton Research Professor of Genetics and former Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with James C. Wang at Harvard University, and performed her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute. As an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, she received numerous awards, including a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, an American Cancer Society Young Investigator Award, a Searle Scholar Award, and sponsorship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Kirkegaard combined her interests in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics in the study of RNA virology, using poliovirus and other positive-strand RNA viruses to understand the cell biology of viral infections and the genetics of viral variability. Since her move to Stanford University School of Medicine in 1996, her interests have focused increasingly on the impact of basic science discoveries on the transmission of viruses in infected hosts. Kirkegaard’s honors include an Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Global Infectious Disease and, in 2006, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, for her approach to guide the selection of antiviral targets with the goal of suppressing the drug-resistant RNA genomes that will inevitably be formed due to the high error rates of RNA replication. She has been recently elected as a Member of the National Academies of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work continues to focus on the mechanisms of diversity and propagation of viruses and suppression of this diversity and spread.
Seminar details
This academic year, we will host a series of virtual and in-person seminars with live, remote access via Zoom. IMB seminars are open to the University of Oregon community, and in-person attendance is welcome. In-person seminars will be held in the Knight Campus Beetham Family Seminar Room at 12:00 p.m.
To accommodate remote speakers and time differences, some seminars may be offered at another agreed-upon time. For students taking BI 407/507 Neuroscience Seminar, please contact the course instructor to access recordings as needed.
Details for upcoming seminars will be shared here on the IMB website as well as through our IMB mailing lists. Links for remote access via Zoom will be available only through IMB seminar mailing list, and those not on the list can request access by contacting Meg Juenemann with their uoregon.edu email address.