Cryo-EM Director
New York University
NYU Langone School of Medicine
I started off in cryo-EM as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. David Stokes, where I worked on helical assemblies of Na,K-ATPase in membranes. Using traditional Fourier-Bessel processing, I was eventually able to produce an 11 Å map of the pump. All images were taken manually on film using a CM-200 FEG electron microscope and Oxford cryo holder.
From there, I eventually moved on to a staff scientist position at the New York Structural Biology Center. I worked there for 13 years and eventually rose to the position of EM Manager and Senior Scientist. There was a large variety of microscopes there: Tecnai F20, JEOL 1230, JEOL 2100, JEOL 3200, and, in 2011, Helios Nanolab 650 FIB/SEM. For several years, we used SerialEM as the primary software for automated data collection. When Bridget Carragher and Clint Potter came in as new directors, we switched to Leginon as the primary software. The NYSBC was also greatly upgraded with donations from the Simons Foundation, and 3 Titan Krios microscopes with direct detectors were installed.
In 2019, I left NYSBC to take a position as Cryo-EM Director and Assistant Professor at NYU Langone. Here, we have a Talos Arctica with a Gatan K3 detector and a Titan Krios with Gatan K3 Bioquantum and Falcon III detectors. I have brought over the Leginon/Appion software suite for efficient data collection and quality monitoring. Although the primary focus of most of our users is currently single particle reconstruction, we are starting to see more and more tomography projects. In future, we hope to obtain a Cryo FIB SEM for cellular sample prepararation.