Principal Investigator
Dr. Evan O’Brien is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He got his B.S. in biochemistry and chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania for his doctoral work with Dr. A. Joshua Wand in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and received his Ph.D. in 2018. Following his graduate work, he pursued postdoctoral studies with Dr. Brian K. Kobilka at Stanford University. Dr. O’Brien’s lab at Hopkins is focused on understanding allostery within G-protein coupled receptors and exploiting this understanding in the development of novel therapeutics.
Graduate Students
Kiara is a graduate student in the Program in Molecular Biophysics (PMB) program. She is originally from Tallahassee, FL but received a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023.
Fun Fact: Kiara was a ballet dancer for 12 years.
Staff
Margaret is a Laboratory Specialist for the O’Brien Biophysics Lab. She is from Ghana but grew up in Northern Virginia. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences from James Madison University in 2021. She worked in Biopharma for 3 years as an Associate Scientist.
Fun Fact: Margaret loves to draw.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ishan completed his Ph.D. in Structural Biology specifically X-ray Crystallography where he has worked on the activation and catalytic mechanism of aspartic proteases. During his postdoc at the NIH he worked on understanding the regulation of Lon proteases and extensively employed Cryo-EM to solve structures of its regulatory states. He is passionate about Structural Biology and like solving structures.
Fun fact: Ishan likes traveling, hiking and cooking.