Brian K. Kay

Principal Investigator

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Brian K . Kay, Ph.D.

Professor & Head

bkay@uic.edu

....Brian is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at UIC. He received his undergraduate and graduate training at the University of Chicago and Yale University, respectively, and then did post-doctoral training at NIH. Prior to arriving at UIC in 2007, he was an Assistant and Associate Professor at UNC-CH, Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Staff Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. His hobbies are running, crossword puzzles, desktop publishing, digital photography, and pestering his lab group.

Lab Members

Sujatha P. Koduvayur, Ph.D, Visiting Assistant Research Professor
skoduvay@uic.edu

.....Sujatha got her graduate training in Dr. Sarah Woodsonʼs lab at Johns Hopkins University studying folding of self-splicing RNAs in vivo. After obtaining her Ph.D in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of Maryland at College Park, she studied the role of microRNAs in Drosophila development at Northwestern University. Before joining the Kay lab in 2010, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Donald Chambers, where she studied the effects of stress on the immune response. Apart from science, she likes biking along the lakefront trail in lovely Chicago summer and trekking with her sisterʼs Collies.

Renhua Huang, Ph.D. Student
renhuahuang@yahoo.com

.....Renhua studied biochemistry and molecular genetics during his undergraduate years in Guangxi University, China. Then he went to Loyola University Chicago to study developmental neurobiology as a M.S. student. He is interested in how molecules interact and how principles of physics and chemistry can be applied to this interaction to elucidate the complexity of cellular signaling networks. Currently he is working to build molecular biosensors that monitor the activation of protein kinases in living cells.

Michael Kierny, Ph.D. Student
mkiern2@uic.edu

.....Mike graduated from Iowa State University in 2006 with a B.S. in Biology and came to UIC in the fall of 2007 to start a PhD program in the Laboratory for Molecular Biology. As an undergraduate he conducted research in the lab of Dr. Marit Nilsen-Hamilton where he worked to characterize a Bovine acute phase protein known as Uterocalin. He also was an employee of the Department of Energy Ames Research Laboratory where he worked on the sub-cloning of malachite green DNA Aptamers. After graduation, he stayed in Ames and worked for the laboratory-affiliated biotech company, where he set-up assays to detect Uterocalin in Bovine milk.

Malgorzata (Gosia) Kokoszka, Ph.D. student
mzytko2@uic.edu

..... Malgorzata (Gosia) Kokoszka, (formerly Zytkowiak), completed her M.S. in Biomedical Physics at Gdansk University, Poland. Her thesis project focused on the phenomena of red blood cells aggregation in human blood using dielectric spectroscopy methods and computer data analysis. Post graduation, she worked at Medical University of Gdansk in the Department of Physics and Biophysics. Before joining the MCDB program at UIC, she volunteered as a lab research assistant in Dr. Rick Sumner Lab at Rush University Medical Center, where she has been involved in a project studying joint replacement in a rat model. Gosia joined the lab in February of 2009. She is passionate about biological sciences especially topics related to cancer biology. Besides science, she enjoys playing with her daughter, running, biking, and traveling.

Kritika Pershad, Ph.D. student
kpersh2@uic.edu

..... Kritika got her Masters in Biochemistry from Osmania University, India. She worked for six months in Dr. Usha Rani's lab at Indian Institute of Chemical technology, on "Plant allelochemicals as botanical pesticides". After her Masters Kritika worked for a year as a research associate in the chemistry division at Hindustan Lever Research center. Her research focused on sunscreen stabilization in formulations. She joined the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology program in fall 2006.

Karolina Wypisniak, Visiting Research Student
kwypis2@uic.edu

.....Karolina is a graduate student from the Humboldt University at Berlin, Germany. She is spending two semesters of her master’s program in Dr. Brian Kay’s lab learning phage-display technology. She graduated with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Hamburg, Germany. During that time she worked at the cosmetic company Beiersdorf AG where she also conducted her bachelor thesis research. If you cannot find her in the lab she is probably exploring Chicago and the rest of the United States.

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