Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division Director Junko Yano has announced that staff scientists Greg Hura and Susan Tsutakawa have officially assumed the roles of MBIB Science Deputy and Head of the Structural Biology Department, respectively. They have been serving in these positions on an interim basis since August 2021.
Greg Hura’s research focus is on understanding the structural mechanisms of biological macromolecular machines and their implications at larger length scales or for novel design. At the Advanced Light Source (ALS), Hura is in the Structurally Integrated Biology for the Life Sciences (SIBYLS) group, which operates Beamline 12.3.1. He is also the Biosciences Thrust Area Representative and the local lead of the Integrated Diffraction Analysis Technologies program. Hura is a co-principal investigator in the NIH-funded ALS-ENABLE program and leads the BRaVE Taskforce 5 effort. He has been with the Lab since 1996 and is an adjunct professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz.
Susan Tsutakawa joined the Lab in 1999 and works on crystallography and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Two of her major foci are the Structural Cell Biology of DNA Repair Machines (SBDR) program and linking SAXS to structure prediction. In addition to her scientific accomplishments, Tsutakawa was the chair of the Lab’s Women Scientists and Engineers Council (WSEC) from 2015–17. She currently serves on the MBIB Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability (IDEA) Committee.
