Dr. Andrzej Witkowski, Associate Staff Scientist, received his MSc and PhD degrees from the Technical University of Gdansk in Poland, where his studies focused on the mechanism of interaction of cytotoxic and antitumor agents with glucocorticoid receptors.  He has been a member of Dr. Stuart Smith’s group since 1984 and has authored more than 20 publications dealing primarily with the expression, purification and kinetic characterization of enzymes involved in the de novo synthesis of fatty acids.

Phone: 510-450-7677
Email: awitkowski@chori.org

Dr. Dejiang Feng, Postdoctoral Fellow, obtained his PhD at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he worked on elucidating the mechanism of post-transcriptional gene silencing on plants. He then spent two years at the University of Helsinki in Finland, working on elucidation of the mechanism of protein secretion in yeast. He joined Stuart Smith’s group at CHORI in 2006 and has developed an siRNA-based model system for studying the role of the mitochondrial fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in cellular function.

Phone : 510-450-2484
E-mail: dfeng@chori.org

Dr. Saloni Pasta, Postdoctoral Fellow, obtained her PhD degree at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, where her research focused on structure-function relationship of α-crystallin, a small heat shock protein with chaperone-like activity. She joined the Smith laboratory in 2006 and has worked primarily on structure-function relationships of the cytosolic fatty acid synthase and the phosphopantetheinyl transferase involved in the posttranslational modification of the acyl carrier proteins.

Phone: 510-450-7676
E-mail: spasta@chori.org

Dr. Stephanie Misquitta, Posdoctoral Fellow, obtained her PhD at University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. Her thesis was devoted to characterization of the interaction of novel inhibitors with glutaminyl cyclase. After studying interaction of the glutathione-S-transferase subunits in Roberta Colman’s laboratory at University of Delaware, she joined the Smith group in 2006. Her major project has been the analysis of crystal structures of component enzymes of both the cytosolic and mitochondrial fatty acid synthases.

Phone: 510-450-7676
E-mail: smisquitta@chori.org