Postbac
Zahra received her M.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Merced in 2025 under the supervision of Dr. Michael Thompson, where she became interested in structural biology. Her work focused on protein crystallization and X-ray crystallography to assess how distal mutations derived from directed evolution, when applied to a Kemp eliminase, affect the enzyme’s structure and function. She now uses cryo-EM to study the structure of proteins and protein filaments, including actin.