Originally a Bay Area native, Maria received her BS in Microbiology from UC San Diego. Previously, she worked making antigenic proteins and aiding in therapeutic antibody discovery and production. In the Ott lab, she is interested in exploring airway organoids and other methods to study SARS-CoV-2 infection and developing therapeutics against viral protein targets. Outside of the lab, Maria enjoys camping, hiking, traveling, and lacrosse.
Research Area: HIV/AIDS
Zapatero Belinchon
Francisco (Fran) comes originally from Spain and obtained his PhD in Virology at Hannover Medical School in Germany. His main interests are the dissection of viral entry and host‑pathogen interactions of emerging and re-emerging pathogens using novel proteomics approaches. Outside the lab, he enjoys hiking, camping, playing video games, and tasting a good ol’ brew.
Padget
Rachel received her B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Central Missouri, an M.S. in Biology from Missouri State University, and her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, where she studied the roles of viruses in sudden cardiac arrest. In the Ott lab, she focuses on the role of factor acetylation in HIV latency and SARS-CoV-2 toxicity in the heart. Outside of the lab, she enjoys running down to the ocean and taking the bus back uphill, playing video games with her cats, and baking cookies.
Matsui
Yusuke studied basic HIV research and clinical medicine at Kyoto University, Japan.
He then joined the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan, where he was involved in the outbreak control of infectious diseases with molecular techniques.
At Ott lab, he is working on research to eradicate diseases caused by HIV and SARS-CoV-2 by studying them from the molecular level.
Outside of the lab, he enjoys participating in marathon races around the world.
Li
Zichong was born in China. After an M.S. research on shrimp White Spot Syndrome Virus, Zichong did his PhD in UC Berkeley exploring the functions of the human transcription elongation machinery in HIV infection. With prior experience on genome wide genetic screens, in the Ott lab, his focus is to derive unbiased comprehensive networks of validated gene pairs supporting critical biological and pathological processes, including chronic HIV infection. Outside of the lab, he enjoys binge-reading research papers, thought experimenting, and eating cheese salad.
Chen
Originally from Los Angeles, Irene is a graduate student in UCSF’s BMS program. She is interested in how viruses hijack host transcription during infection.When she isn’t in lab, Irene can be found going off trail in the mountains, eating her way through SF, and taking care of her succulents.
Boehm
Sreekumar
Hello my name is Bharath and I am a post doc in Dr. Ott’s lab. I am currently working on HIV and T-cell biology.
Schulze-Gahmen
Ursula received her P hD in Biochemistry from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and expanded into structural biology during her postdoc years at the Scripps Research Institutes in La Jolla, CA and at UC Berkeley. At Gladstone she is studying viral protein-host interactions including viral proteins from HIV, SARS-Cov-2, and enterovirus. In her free time she likes gardening, traveling, and spending time with her family.
Ott
Institute of Virology
Senior Vice President, Gladstone Institutes
Professor of Medicine, UCSF
Melanie Ott earned her MD degree from University of Frankfurt in Germany and a PhD from the Picower Graduate School of Molecular Medicine in New York. In 1998, she started her own research group at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, in the department headed by tumor virologist and Nobel laureate Harald zur Hausen, studying HIV pathogenesis and a new emerging pathogen at the time, hepatitis C virus (HCV).
In 2002, she moved her lab to the Gladstone Institutes, where she continued her work on HIV and HCV, and expanded her research into the host-virus interface in diseases such as Zika, influenza and SARS-CoV-2. She has focused much of her work on the role of reversible protein acetylation in HIV transcription (especially the viral Tat protein), and identifying new molecular targets for treatments and cure, new diagnostics and the potential for pan-viral therapeutics.
Melanie is the Director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology Institute and Senior Vice President of the Gladstone Institutes, and a professor of medicine at University of California – San Francisco. She is a recipient of NIH MERIT and DP1 Avantgarde Awards, an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.