All undergraduates, including entering freshmen (who should also meet with their college advisor), should consult one of the MB&B Faculty Advisors assigned to their class for further information, advice, and for signing their course schedules. There is no need for the DUS to sign your course schedule. Please consult the list of faculty advisors below.
Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS)
Michael Koelle
(email to MBBUndergrad@yale.edu)
SHM CE28A
(203-737-5808)
DUS Registrar
Elizabeth Vellali
(email to MBBUndergrad@yale.edu)
BASS 334 (203-432-2172)
Majors Accepted to the B.S./M.S. Program
Michael Koelle
(email to MBBUndergrad@yale.edu)
SHM CE28A
(203-737-5808)
Faculty Advisors for Each Class Year
2024 | 2025|2026|First Years
Class of 2024
YSB345
432-8411
Franziska Bleichert grew up in Germany, where she graduated from Medical School before moving to the US to obtain her PhD in Genetics from Yale University in 2010. She performed her postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow, and then at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 2017, she started an independent research group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, and joined Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry as an Assistant Professor in January 2020. Her research focuses on understanding the operating principles of macromolecular machines involved in chromosome replication and in the maintenance of genome stability using a combination of structural biology, biochemical, biophysical, and cellular approaches.
318 BASS (203-432-8954), Assistant Lisa Adams
Andrew Miranker studied Biology at Carnegie Mellon University, earned his PhD in Biophysics from Harvard, and did his postdoc in Biophysics at Oxford. At Yale he currently teaches MB&B 420a/720a Macromolecular Structure and Biophysical Analysis. Sporadically, he teaches MB&B 107 Being Human in STEM and MB&B 218 Art and Biomolecular Recognition. Miranker studies protein folding, misfolding and aggregation as it relates to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Diabetes Click here to visit his webpage.
Class of 2025
CE-28A SHM (203-737-5808)
Michael Koelle studied Mathematics and Biology at the University of Washington, earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University, and received postdoctoral training in neuroscience and genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At Yale he currently teaches MB&B 101a Biochemistry and Biophysics, as well as MB&B 300a Principles of Biochemistry I. His lab studies the mechanism neural signaling through G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, as well as many addictive drugs act in the brain at at least in part through GPCRs that activate hetrotrimeric G proteins to modulate the activity of neurons. The Koelle lab studies the molecular mechanism of such signaling. The lab also studies how such signaling is used to control neural circuits, with these studies focused on using genetics and microscopy to analyze the egg-laying circuit of the simple nematode worm C. elegans. Click here to visit the Koelle lab webpage.
C-123 SHM (203-785-3322)
Karla Neugebauer obtained her BS in Biology at Cornell University and her PhD in Neuroscience from University of California at San Francisco. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, she developed an unreasonable obsession with RNA, becoming fascinated by two problems: 1) how are RNA processing and transcription coordinated in space and time in living cells? and 2) how does RNA participate in the architecture of eukaryotic cells? Techniques are molecular biology, cell biology, imaging, bioinformatics, and genomics. She pursued these questions since 2001 at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology in Dresden, Germany, where she was Vice-Dean of the graduate school. She joined the Yale MB&B faculty in 2013 and is an active fellow of Jonathan Edwards College. Click here to visit her lab web page.
BASS Center (203-737-6563)
Kate Schilling studied Chemistry at the California State University – Northridge as a transfer student and earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the California Institute of Technology. After graduation, she worked as a forensic research scientist with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory. In 2017, she came to Yale as an associate research scientist and lecturer in the department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and with Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. In 2022, she joined the teaching faculty of the department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry to focus on advancing undergraduate laboratory and research education. She prioritizes equity in the lab classroom and supporting a diverse student community. Her research interests include understanding the biophysical and biochemical mechanisms behind the senses and advancing forensics-related biochemical research
Class of 2026
West Campus
Lily Kabeche was born in Caracas, Venezuela and moved to the US at an early age. She has lived in many states including Illinois, Washington, Maryland, and Florida. Lily attended the University of Miami, where she majored in Microbiology and Immunology (B.S. 2007). She then did her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Dartmouth College in Dr. Duane Compton’s lab, where she studied the mechanism by which kinetochore-microtubules are regulated in mitosis to promote proper chromosome segregation. She went on to do her post-doctoral work in Dr. Lee Zou’s lab, at Mass General Hospital, Harvard University, where she identified a novel role for the DNA damage repair kinase, ATR, in mitosis. She joined the Yale faculty in 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Her current work uses a combination of cell biology, biochemistry and microscopy to investigate the non-canonical roles of the DNA damage repair pathway and to further understand the role of ATR in promoting genome stability.
228 Bass
432-5101
Mark Hochstrasser majored in Biochemistry (and German) at Rutgers University in New Jersey and earned his PhD from the University of California at San Francisco. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. He started his own research group at the University of Chicago and then moved to Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, where he is currently the departmental chair. His research is focused on the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Current interests include how this system of protein modification and degradation controls cell differentiation and responses to starvation and how endosymbiotic bacteria exploit this system to manipulate the reproduction of their eukaryotic hosts. His laboratory group uses a diverse array of genetic, biochemical, and cell biological methods. Please click here to visit his lab webpage.
418A BASS
432-0753
Allison Didychuk was born in northern Manitoba (Canada). Allison made her way south to the University of Jamestown in North Dakota, where she majored in Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics (B.S. 2012). She then did her Ph.D. in Biophysics with Samuel Butcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying the assembly of the yeast spliceosome (Ph.D. 2017). She moved to the University of California, Berkeley for postdoctoral training with Britt Glaunsinger, where she studied essential steps of herpesvirus replication. She joined the Yale faculty in 2022 as an Assistant Professor in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, where she continues to use diverse approaches - structural biology, molecular virology, and functional genomics - to understand how herpes viruses work. Click here to visit the Didychuk lab webpage.
First Year and Prospective Majors
All first years and prospective majors should meet with the DUS directly. They will then be assigned a faculty advisor for their MB&B career.
CE-28A SHM (203-737-5808)
Michael Koelle studied Mathematics and Biology at the University of Washington, earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University, and received postdoctoral training in neuroscience and genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At Yale he currently teaches MB&B 101a Biochemistry and Biophysics, as well as MB&B 300a Principles of Biochemistry I. His lab studies the mechanism neural signaling through G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, as well as many addictive drugs act in the brain at at least in part through GPCRs that activate hetrotrimeric G proteins to modulate the activity of neurons. The Koelle lab studies the molecular mechanism of such signaling. The lab also studies how such signaling is used to control neural circuits, with these studies focused on using genetics and microscopy to analyze the egg-laying circuit of the simple nematode worm C. elegans. Click here to visit the Koelle lab webpage.