Principal Investigator
Dr. Sarah Veatch is a Professor of Biophysics and Physics, the Associate Airector of the Biophysics unit, and director of the Biophysics Graduate Program at the University of Michigan.
Her early work described liquid-liquid phase separation in model membranes, mapping phase diagrams in purified systems and describing composition fluctuations near miscibility critical points. She found that vesicles isolated from living cell plasma membranes are biologically tuned to be near a membrane phase transition at growth temperatures. Her lab is translating concepts of membrane phase separation to living cell membranes using single molecule fluorescence localization microscopy methods to quantify membrane composition at high spatial and temporal resolution and physically rigorous models to describe functional organization within signaling processes. Overall, her research program aims to understand how diverse cellular signaling processes exploit emergent behaviors of heterogeneous plasma membranes.
Sarah received the Henry Russel Award of the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School in 2017, the Howard Prize from Durham University in 2015, the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff award from the Biophysical Society in 2014, and the a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2012. She is principle investigator on research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Sarah Shelby
Postdoctoral Researcher
Jennifer Flanagan
Postdoctoral Fellow
Thomas Shaw
Applied Physics
Graduate Student
Thomas joined the Veatch lab in January 2016, and is studying the regulation of ion channel dynamics by critical membrane lipids, using a variety of techniques including localization microscopy. He is also working on improving data analysis methods for localization microscopy. Outside the lab, he enjoys baking for friends, and learning about language and linguistics, among other things.
Frank Fazekas
Postbac Researcher
Kathleen Wisser
Laboratory Manager
Kathleen joined the Veatch lab in 2014 and has been in the Biophysics Department since 1992. She received her BS in Chemistry from EMU. Kathleen conducts research on functional studies of B cell receptor signaling under various perturbation conditions. When Kathleen isn’t in the lab she enjoys the outdoors and cooking.
Andrea Stoddard
Laboratory Manager
Tracy Hodges
Technician
Former Group Members
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Elin Edwald
Matt Stone
Julia Bourg
Marcos Nunez
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
Dr. Jiang Zhao
Dr. Krishnan Raghunathan
Dr. Mariam Nouri
Dr. Subhadip Ghosh
STAFF
Joeseph Schaurerte
Jing Wu
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Fiona Gaffney
Anna Gaffney
Ellyn Gray
Erin Gray
Margaret Burns
Eric Sink
Gladys Diaz-Vazquez
Jason Karslake
Joshua Karslake
Rasseil (Rosie) Alzouhayli
Juan Lazo
Amandine Lee
Anish Abrol
Sam Hern
Karun Nair
Adam Sobilo