Students & Research Fellows

Postdoctoral Associate

I am a new postdoctoral associate who joined Dr. Dirk Schnappinger’s laboratory at Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Cornell in April 2014. Prior to arriving at Cornell, I obtained my PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Birmingham, UK under the supervision of Prof. Gurdyal S. Besra. I am currently working on the TresCantos Open Lab project which is a collaborative effort between Schnappinger Lab at Weill Cornell and Tres Cantos Open Lab foundation, Galaxo Smith Kline, Spain.  I am focusing on employing high throughput methods for screening of anti-mycobacterial compounds against the essential genes of mycobacteria and evaluating their potential as drug targets. 

Publications:

S. Grover,L. J. Alderwick, A. K. Mishra, A. Bhatt, G.S. Besra, Benzothiazinones mediate killing of Corynebacterianeae by blocking decaprenyl phosphate recycling involved in cell wall biosynthesis. Journal of Biological Chemistry 2014, 289, 6177-6187 

Meike Baumgart, Kerstin Luder, Shipra Grover, Cornelia Gätgens , Gurdyal S. Besra, Julia Frunzke, IpsA, a novel LacI-type regulator, is required for inositol-1 derived lipid formation in Corynebacteria and Mycobacteria. BMC Biology 2013, 11:122  

S. Grover*, M. Jankute*, A. K. Rana, G. S. Besra, Arabinogalactan and lipoarabinomannan biosynthesis: structure, biogenesis and their potential as drug targets. Future Microbiol  2012 Jan;7(1):129-47.

S. Grover*, M. Jankute*, H. Birch, G.S. Besra, Genetics of Arabinogalactan and Lipoarabinomannan biosynthesis. Molecular Genetics of Mycobacteria Second Ed. ASM Press. (Accepted, in press)

*Co-authored

Postdoctoral Associate

Ruojun grew up in Shanghai and graduated from Fudan University before moving to NYC for graduate school at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2012. She joined the Ehrt lab in 2013 as a Ph.D. student and is currently a postdoctoral associate. Her research focuses on the microbial and host components that facilitate the persistence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the body. Outside of the lab, Ruojun enjoys traveling and taking photos of squirrels in Central Park.

Postdoctoral Associate

Divya joined the Kafsack Lab after completing her PhD with Utpal Tatu at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. There she found that malaria parasites lack the ability to recycle homocysteine via the transulfuration pathway, instead accumulating and exporting the metabolite. These increased homocysteine concentrations promote gametocytogenesis in P. falciparum. Divya also worked with a variety of other protozoan parasites. When not in lab, she enjoys traveling, reading, running and socializing with friends and family.

Postdoctoral Associate

I completed my Ph.D. (Health & Biological Sciences) from Symbiosis International Deemed University in 2019. I worked at National AIDS Research Institute (ICMR), Pune, India. During my tenure here, I worked on various aspects of HIV drug resistance. In my Ph.D. course, I studied the HIV-1 Gag mutations among protease inhibitor experienced patients and its role in virus release and replication.

I joined Dr. John Moore’s lab as a postdoctoral associate at Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Weill Cornell Medicine in January 2020. I am currently working on cleaved, stabilized HIV-1 Env trimers for structural and vaccine studies.

Sr. Research Associate

Curtis Engelhart completed his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at North Dakota State University in Fargo in 2009, and completed a Master of Science in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 2012. He spent one year working at GlaxoSmithKline in Tres Cantos, Spain, to develop a targeted whole-cell screen for inhibitors of biotin protein ligase from Mtb. In February 2014 he joined Dirk Schnappinger’s lab. His current work focuses on early drug discovery and target validation of drug candidates in development from various academic and industrial collaborative partners via chemical susceptibility profiling of Mtb conditional knock-down mutants (in single- and mixed-strain formats) and isolation/characterization of resistant Mtb mutants. In his free time Curtis enjoys hiking, cycling, video gaming, and hanging out with his pets, Charlie the cat and Hulk the dog.

Publications:

Beites, T.; O’Brien, K.; Tiwari, D.; Engelhart, C.A.et al. Plasticity of theMycobacterium tuberculosisRespiratory Chain and Its Impact on Tuberculosis Drug Development. Nat. Commun.2019, 10, 4970.

Bockman, M. R.; Engelhart, C. A.et al. Investigation of (S)-(–)-Acidomycin: A Selective Antimycobacterial Natural Product that Inhibits Biotin Synthase.ACS Infect. Dis.2019, 5, 598–617.

Bockman, M. R.; Engelhart, C. A.et al. Avoiding Antibiotic Inactivation in Mycobacterium tuberculosisby Rv3406 through Strategic Nucleoside Modification. ACS Infect. Dis. 2018, 4, 1102–1113.

Neres, J. P.; Engelhart, C. A.et al. Non-nucleoside Inhibitors of BasE, An Adenylating Enzyme in the Siderophore Biosynthetic Pathway of the Opportunistic Pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii. J. Med. Chem. 2013, 56, 2385–2405.

Engelhart, C. A.; Aldrich, C. C. Synthesis of Chromone, Quinolone, and Benzoxazinone Sulfonamide Nucleosides as Conformationally Constrained Inhibitors of Adenylating Enzymes Required for Siderophore Biosynthesis. J. Org. Chem. 2013, 78, 7470–7481.

Postdoctoral Associate

Kit came to the Kafsack Lab from the malaria research hotbed of Melbourne, Australia where he first did honors research with Brian Cooke at Monash University followed by a Ph.D. with Stuart Ralph at the University of Melbourne. In his thesis research Kit elegantly elucidated the molecular and cellular defects that underlie the delayed death of malaria parasites upon loss of their apicoplast. He was also a BoP student in 2017. When he’s not in the lab Kit likes to play bike polo or watch movies.

Postdoctoral Associate

Yao Liu is from Yangzhou, China. He received his B.S. degree from Central South University (Changsha, China) in 2011 with a major in biotechnology. He joined Dr. Zhao-Qing Luo’s Lab at Purdue University in 2013, where he studied the modulation of actin cytoskeleton by L. pneumophila effector proteins. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in December 2018 and joined the Ehrt lab as a postdoctoral associate in March 2019. He is currently studying immune mediators that affect the relapse of tuberculosis.

Publications:

Gan, N.*, Zhen, Z.*, Liu, Y.*, Xu, X.*, He, C., Qiu, J., …& Luo, Z. Q. (2019) Regulation of phosphoribosyl ubiquitination by a calmodulin-dependent glutamylase. Nature, 572(7769), 387-391. * Equal contribution

Akturk, A., Wasilko, D. J., Wu, X., Liu, Y., Zhang, Y., Qiu, J., ... & Mao, Y. (2018). Mechanism of phosphoribosyl-ubiquitination mediated by a single Legionella effector. Nature, 557(7707), 729.

Liu, Y., Zhu, W., Tan, Y., Nakayasu, E. S., Staiger, C. J., & Luo, Z. Q. (2017). A Legionella effector disrupts host cytoskeletal structure by cleaving actin. PLoS pathogens, 13(1), e1006186.

Zhao, J., Beyrakhova, K., Liu, Y., Alvarez, C. P., Bueler, S. A., Xu, L., ... & Cygler, M. (2017). Molecular basis for the binding and modulation of V-ATPase by a bacterial effector protein. PLoS pathogens, 13(6), e1006394.

Luo, X., Wasilko, D. J., Liu, Y., Sun, J., Wu, X., Luo, Z. Q., & Mao, Y. (2015). Structure of the Legionella virulence factor, SidC reveals a unique PI (4) P-specific binding domain essential for its targeting to the bacterial phagosome. PLoS pathogens, 11(6), e1004965.