Members
Aashish Manglik
Associate Professor, Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Anesthesia
Email: aashish.manglik@ucsf.edu · Twitter: @AashishManglik · Google Scholar
Aashish was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked in the lab of Jeff McKinney on Salmonella-host interactions. He moved to California in 2008 to join the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program. There, he worked with Brian Kobilka as a graduate student to elucidate different aspects of GPCR function, resulting in a number of important contributions to our current understanding of opioid and adrenergic receptors. After finishing his medical training in May 2016, Aashish began his independent research career as the first Stanford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine within the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. He subsequently began as an assistant professor at UCSF in fall of 2017.
Postdocs
Karthik Srinivasan
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: karthik.srinivasan@ucsf.edu · Google Scholar
Karthik earned his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and his Master of Science in Biological Sciences from BITS Pilani Goa Campus in India. During his Master’s thesis, he conducted research as a visiting student in the lab of Andre Hoelz at Caltech, focusing on elucidating the structure of a multiprotein component of the nuclear pore complex. Pursuing his doctoral studies, Karthik transitioned to the lab of Nicholas Noinaj at Purdue University, where he devised an innovative approach to isolate the chloroplast import machinery from plant biomass. Deepening his engagement with membrane protein structural biology, Karthik then joined the Manglik lab where he presently investigates the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor and its implications in autoimmune thyroid diseases.
Huixia Wang
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: Huixia.Wang@ucsf.edu
Huixia earned her PhD in the Wüthrich laboratory at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Yile Dai
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: Yile.Dai@ucsf.edu · Google Scholar
Yile earned his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Joseph Kim
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: Joseph.Kim3@ucsf.edu
Joe earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is now a postdoctoral scientist in the lab.
Claudia Llinas del Torrent
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: Claudia.LlinasdelTorrentMasachs@ucsf.edu
Claudia visited the Manglik lab for 6 months during her PhD, which she earned in the Pardo lab at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Following her graduation she returned to the lab as a postdoctoral fellow.
Hiroyuki Okamoto
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: Hiroyuki.Okamoto@ucsf.edu · Twitter: @hhokamoto_en · Google Scholar
Hiro came from Japan, where he earned his Ph.D. in Biological Science at the University of Tokyo. He conducted his graduate studies in the lab of Osamu Nureki, where he elucidated the structural basis of melatonin receptors using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). After he received his Ph.D., Hiro decided to join the Manglik lab, where he is trying to find ligands of some classA GPCRs using biochemical and biophysical approaches with support from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Long Term Fellowship (LTF) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
José Velilla
Postdoctoral Scholar (HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow)
Email: Jose.Velilla@ucsf.edu
The “resolution revolution” in structural biology has yielded unprecedented insights into the molecular mechanisms that enable protein function. Yet, these insights fall short of delivering a full understanding, as they lack the crucial context of the cellular environment. José Velilla is leveraging advances in the fields of electron microscopy and mass spectrometry to bridge the atomic and cellular scales in understanding G protein-coupled receptor signaling from unconventional cell locations. G protein-coupled receptors are critical to a variety of physiological processes, including sight, taste, blood pressure regulation, and glucose metabolism.
Graduate students
Simone Harrison
Graduate student, Biophysics
Email: simone.harrison@ucsf.edu
Simone received her bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Wesleyan University in 2018. At Wesleyan, she worked in the Olson lab to study the biophysical properties of novel pathogenic proteins from the genus Vibrio. After college, Simone worked for 2 years at Vanderbilt University in the Chazin lab as a Research Assistant, studying the structural basis of nutrient sequestration and inflammation mediated by S100 proteins, and aiding with protein production. In the Manglik lab, she is studying the molecular details of the interaction between GPCRs and GRKs, as well as the mechanism of GPCR mediated regulation of the hedgehog signaling pathway.
Matthew Howard
Graduate student, Tetrad (joint with Coyote-Maestas Lab)
Email: matthew.howard@ucsf.edu · Personal website · Twitter: @matthewkhoward · Google Scholar
Matt comes to the Manglik Lab by way of Washington University in St. Louis where he studied chemistry and biology. At WashU, he worked in the Jackrel Lab to engineer protein disaggregases and investigate microbial amyloid proteins. In the Manglik Lab, Matt develops high-throughput screening assays to enable deep mutational scanning of many GPCR phenotypes. These approaches are applied across diverse receptor systems to study the fundamental principles of ligand recognition and signal transduction.
Luis Santiago
Graduate student, PSPG (joint with Von Zastrow Lab)
Email: luis.santiago@ucsf.edu
Luis grew up in Los Angeles and practiced computational modeling at CSU Northridge. He worked at Labcorp Drug Development before joining the UCSF Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics program as a PhD student. Besides doing science, Luis also loves cooking and baking. His latest creation was chocoflan!
Eshan Mehrotra
Graduate student (MSTP)
Email: Eshan.Mehrotra@ucsf.edu
Eshan graduated from Cornell University where he worked in the Kellogg lab. He is now in the MSTP program at UCSF and is a member of the Tetrad graduate program.
Sara Whiteman
Graduate student, UCSF/UC Berkeley Bioengineering
Email: Sara.Whiteman@ucsf.edu · Google Scholar
Staff
Daniel Hogan
Bioinformatics programmer
Email: daniel.hogan@ucsf.edu · Personal website
Daniel graduated from Stanford, where he worked on single-molecule biophysics with Dr. Steven Block. In the Manglik lab, Daniel works to improve and expand the lab’s computational resources. He’s passionate about open science, open data, and open-source software. Outside of lab, Daniel can usually be found running or playing board games.
Former members
Jakki Stevens
Lab Manager (2022–2026)
Next: Lab operations at a startup
Christian Billesbølle
Assistant Professional Researcher (2017–2025)
Next: Principal Scientist at Zealand Pharma
Yue Wan
Postdoctoral Scholar (2022–2025)
Next: R&D at Twist
Linus Li
Chase Webb
Graduate student, PSPG (joint with Shoichet Lab) (until 2023)
Next: Postdoc Javitch lab
Nick Hoppe
Graduate student, Biophysics (until 2023)
Next: Consultant at McKinsey
Bryan Faust
Graduate student, Biophysics (joint with Cheng Lab) (until 2022)
Next: Deal analyst at A16Z
Benjamin Barsi-Rhyne
Graduate student, Tetrad (joint with von Zastrow Lab) (until 2022)
Next: Scientist at Vicinitas Therapeutics
Julian Harris
Graduate student, CCB (until 2022)
Next: University of Delaware
Melanie O’Rourke
Lab manager (until 2022)
Next: Lab operations at Glyphic
Ishan Deshpande
Postdoctoral fellow (until 2022)
Next: Principal scientist at Genentech
Dora Obgonna
Summer student, SRTP (2021)
Next: Undergraduate student, UCSD
Ashley Olivares Rojas
Summer student, BAYS (2021)
Next: High school student, KIPP
Jiahao Liang
Research associate and lab manager (2017–2020)
Next: Graduate student at Stanford University
Zhen Tong
Undergraduate student from Nankai University (2019)
Next: Graduate student at the University of Chicago
Anastasiia Sukalskaia
Master’s student from the University of Copenhagen (2018–2019)
Next: Graduate student at the University of Zurich
Simon Schneider
Master’s student from Goethe University (2019)
Next: Master’s student at Goethe University
Preetham Bachina
Undergraduate summer student from Rice University (2018)
Next: Undergraduate at Rice University
Yagmur Muftuoglu
Postdoctoral scholar (2016–2017)
Next: Medical student at Stanford University
Joining
We are actively recruiting highly motivated graduate students and postdoctoral fellows interested in problems at the intersection of transmembrane signaling, protein biophysics, and human disease.
Interested graduate students should apply to one of the UCSF graduate programs.
Postdoctoral fellows should contact Aashish directly with a CV, research proposal, and three references.