People

Rees F. Garmann, PI
Rees is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a member of the Viral Information Institute at SDSU. He joined the SDSU faculty after doing a postdoc in Applied Physics at Harvard University with Vinny Manoharan. Before that he completed his PhD in Physical Chemistry at UCLA under the guidance of Bill Gelbart and Chuck Knobler.

Fernando Vasquez, Graduate student
Fernando is a second year masters student studying RNA structure and RNA-protein interactions. He received a BS in Chemistry from UCLA.

Daniel Villarreal, Graduate student
Daniel is a second year doctoral student studying viral capsid assembly and disassembly. He received a BS in Physics and a BS in Biochemistry from UCSD.

Herman Dhaliwal, Graduate student
Herman is a first year masters student studying RNA structure and dynamics. She received her BS in Biochemistry from Western Washington University, doing research with Professor Gregory O’Neil.

Amineh Rastandeh, Graduate student
Amineh is a first year masters student studying how RNA phage identify and package their genomes with high specificity. She received her BS in Biochemistry from UCSD.

Elmer Gamez, Undergraduate
Elmer is a fourth year Microbiology major at SDSU who is using electron microscopy to image phages and other virus-like particles.

Sophia Alvarez, Undergraduate
Sophia is a second year undergraduate student at SDSU who is making mutant phages and phage genomes.

Alaina Sekany, Undergraduate
Alaina is a fourth year undergraduate student at SDSU working on the self-assembly of DNA-functionalized virus-like particles.