BAKER LAB - Key Persons


Abbas Idris

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Abhishek Singh

Abhishek is exploring how to create highly asymmetric protein assemblies with precise control over shape and size.

Adam Broerman

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Adam is designing motions, mechanics, and kinetics of dynamic protein assemblies.

Aditya Krishnakumar

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Aditya is designing de novo cytokines for autoimmune therapies

Alexander Shida

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Alex is combining conformational dynamics with enzyme design

Alexis Courbet

Job Titles:
  • Acting Instructor
Alexis is a protein nanomachine designer and AI-based protein design researcher, exploring the field from first principles to translation.

Ali Alattar

Ali is designing phosphorylation-inducible heterodimers.

Andrew Favor

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Andrew is developing deep learning models to design complexes containing both proteins and nucleic acids.

Andrew Hunt

Andrew designs enzymes and develops methods for collecting and using large amounts of data to improve design outcomes.

Annika Philomin

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Annika is designing transmembrane beta barrel proteins for small molecule sensing by improving deep learning methods

Arvind Pillai

Arvind is working on the design of allosterically switchable enzymes, with the aim of building useful protein sensors and nanomachines.

Aubrey Davis

Job Titles:
  • Endowed Professor of Biochemistry, University of Washington School of Medicine

Avery Yang

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Avery is designing enzymes inspired by organocatalysts

Avi Swartz

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Avi is designing new photosystems for artificial photosynthesis

Beau Lonnquist

Beau is designing de novo transcription factors to regulate gene expression.

Brian Coventry

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Brian is trying to understand the forces that stick proteins together

Caixuan Liu

Job Titles:
  • Caixuan Is Doing Protein Design of IDP

Carl Wang

Carl is designing enzymes to clean up forever chemicals

Cesar Ramirez Sarmiento

Job Titles:
  • Visiting Professor from Chile
Cesar is a visiting professor from Chile, learning about AI-based protein design tools to generate new enzymes & enzymatic complexes

Chan Johng Kim

Chan is designing cytokine mimics to boost anti-cancer immunity with fewer side effects, activating only in tumor-specific environments

Christina Savvides

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Christina is interested in designing immunomodulators to treat autoimmune diseases.

Chuanyun Xu

Chuanyun is designing modular transmembrane components for sensing, manipulating, and transporting.

Clara McCurdy

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Clara is designing proteins to edit the epigenome and stabilize blood vessels for therapeutics.

Cullen Demakis

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Cullen is designing protein motors that cycle between multiple well-defined states under power.

David Baker

Job Titles:
  • Principal Investigator
  • Director, Institute for Protein Design

David Kim

Job Titles:
  • Staff

David Lee

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
David is designing a modular protein toolkit to generate specific cell signaling outcomes.

Declan Evans

Declan is designing enzymes for reactions not observed in Nature

Derrick Hicks

Job Titles:
  • Acting Instructor

Dionne Vafeados

Job Titles:
  • Staff

Ella Haefner

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Ella is designing proteins to modulate protein homeostasis.

Eric Sun

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Eric is developing and testing methods for antibody design.

Florence Hardy

Florence is designing light activated enzymes using noncanonical amino acid photosensitisers.

Giona Cattaneo

Giona is interested in designing a light-driven catalyst for phenol oxidation which could be further used in an artificial ETC.

Green Ahn

Green is designing proteins to modulate cellular processes involved in cancer.

Hao Shen

Hao is designing self-assembling protein filament nanomaterials

Harley Pyles

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Harley is designing and characterizing proteins to control the formation of minerals

Inna Goreshnik

Job Titles:
  • Staff

Isaac Sappington

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Isaac is developing methods to solve protein-protein interface design, enabling the creation of de novo protein therapeutics and cytokines

Jacob Gershon

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Jason Zhang

Jason Zhang is designing molecular tools to understand and manipulate cancer cell signaling.

Jonas Wilhelm

Jonas is designing enzymes that catalyze new-to-nature reactions

Julia Bonzanini

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Julia is making proteins that can specifically bind to peptide-MHC molecules for cancer immunotherapy.

Kathryn Shelley

Kathryn is designing proteins that undergo light-driven conformational change.

Kejia Wu

Kejia is on method development for binding peptides/intrinsically disordered regions, and functionalizing the binders.

Kiana Pavlovic

Kiana is designing antibodies to advance biological therapeutic discovery

Kiera Sumida

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Kiera is designing enzymes for plastic degradation.

Kirsten Thompson

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Kirsten is working on de novo protein and cellular cancer immunotherapies.

Kristin Ding

Kristin is designing protein sensing domains that can recognize phosphorylation.

Laura Guerrero

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Laura is designing peptide-MHC scaffolds to enable the understanding of peptide-specific disease associations.

Linna An

Job Titles:
  • Acting Instructor

Ljubica Mihaljevic

Ljubica is solubilizing native membrane proteins using de novo protein design and making transmembrane proteins from scratch

Long Tran

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Magnus Bauer

Magnus is exploring the design of kinases and protein-based inhibitors to decode and manipulate cellular logic.

Mariana Garcia Sanchez

Job Titles:
  • Staff

Marti Rae Tooley

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Marti is interested in modulating the immune response to vaccines through protein designed nanoparticles to generate long lasting response.

Meg Lunn-Halbert

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Meg is a BPSD graduate student in the King and Baker labs. She is working to improve vaccine efficacy using de novo protein design.

Michelin Lin

Michelin is using transmembrane beta-barrel proteins as nanopores to advance DNA and protein sequencing technologies.

Mohamad Abedi

Mohamad is designing proteins to understand and manipulate cell signaling networks

Nathan Ennist

Job Titles:
  • Acting Instructor

Nathan Forest Greenwood

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Nathan is designing protein binders to target cancer and increase our understanding of biology.

Nathaniel Corley

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Nicole Roullier

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Nicole is optimizing yeast workflows to better identify useful de novo proteins

Paul Kim

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Paul is working on generative models for design of DNA-binding-proteins, with the eventual goal of optimizing for specificity.

Peik Lund-Andersen

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Peik is designing redox enzymes and electron transport proteins for artificial photosynthesis

Rafi Brent

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Rafi is working on deep learning methods for antibody structure prediction and design.

Raktim Mitra

Raktim is developing methods for designing diverse Nucleic Acid binding proteins.

Ria Sonigra

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Ria is working on designing transmembrane beta barrels for biosensing applications

Riley Quijano

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Riley is using both DNA-binder design and enzyme design to make de novo nucleases capable of cutting new recognition sites.

Rishabh Chowhan

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Rishabh is designing de novo protein binders to modulate cell signaling for various medical applications.

Riti Biswas

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Riti is working on antibody design to accelerate biologic therapeutics R&D.

Rohith Krishna

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Rohith is developing neural networks for structure prediction and design.

Roman Barth

Roman is designing novel enzymatic molecular motors.

Roni Weissman

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Roni is working on designing new nanocage modalities for delivery.

Rose Duong

Rose is designing proteins which undergo light-induced conformational change.

Ryan Kibler

Ryan is designing proteins for purifying non-biological compounds of industrial interest

Ryan McHugh

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Ryan is training machine learning models specialized for predicting the structure and specificity of DNA-binding proteins.

Sam Pellock

Job Titles:
  • Acting Instructor

Samir Faruq

Samir is designing mini-binders as potential therapeutics to combat infections associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Sebastian Kenny

Kenny is designing minibinder proteins to perform targeted protein degradation for novel therapeutic applications.

Seth Woodbury

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Seth is designing de novo (metallo)enzymes from transition state theozymes for diverse catalytic and photocatalytic applications.

Shayan Sadre

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Shayan is interested in designing binders to modulate protein homeostasis.

Shingo Honda

Shingo is designing asymmetric protein assembly aided by a peptide scaffold.

Shruti Jain

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Shunzhi Wang


Stephanie Hanna

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Stephanie Hoang

Stephanie is interested in therapies for autoimmune diseases.

Tim Huddy

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Tim is making proteins that can be assembled sequentially (like solid phase synthesis with whole structural proteins)

Timo Fluegel

Timo is designing acyltransferases to synthesize amide and ester bonds.

Tracy Yu

Tracy is working on developing bone-mimetic materials via hydroxyapatite mineralization proteins.

Wei Chen

Wei is designing proteins to modulate gene expression

Will Sheffler

Job Titles:
  • Staff

Woody Ahern

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student

Xiangli Qu

Xiangli is interested in designing protein binders to modulate the function of membrane proteins like GPCRs

Xinru Wang


Yang Bo

Yang is designing proteins for tissue-specific drug delivery.

Yang Hsia

Job Titles:
  • Staff
Yang is interested in designing protein and protein-adjacent bio-materials across different length scales (nano- to macro-scale).

Yuliya Politanska

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Yuliya is working on the computational design of DNA binding proteins with a goal of developing de novo transcription factors.

Zari Magness

Job Titles:
  • Executive Assistant

Zhichun Guo

Zhichun is developing deep learning methods to enhance the prediction of protein binding interactions

Zihao Song

Job Titles:
  • Grad Student
Zihao is interested in designing a synthetic proteome and an artificial cell