Kristen M. Ramsey, Ph.D.

Principle Investigator
Assistant Professor, Structural Biology, Biochemistry & Biophysics (SB3)
Email: kristen.ramsey@uconn.edu

As an undergraduate at Florida State University, Dr. Ramsey was first introduced to the world of protein biochemistry, and immediately fell in love. After graduating from FSU with a B.S. in Biochemistry, Dr. Ramsey attended the University of California, San Diego where she performed her doctoral research in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Komives, studying the role of protein structure and dynamics in the regulation of NFkB signaling. Upon receiving her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCSD, Dr. Ramsey’s interest in further understanding how fundamental biophysical mechanisms of protein-protein interactions effect functional changes in cells led her to pursue postdoctoral training in Dr. Doug Barrick’s lab at Johns Hopkins University. As an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Barrick Lab, Dr. Ramsey focused on utilizing thermodynamic characterization of Notch transcriptional activation complex formation as a way to understand paralog-specific Notch signaling. In her postdoctoral work, Dr. Ramsey was able to integrate rigorous molecular biophysical approaches with a cell-based functional assay. The synergy achieved by this combination provided a quantitative framework for understanding paralog-specific Notch signaling and became the inspiration for the general approach utilized by the Ramsey Lab to define biochemical and biophysical mechanisms of protein-ligand interactions as the basis to understanding the fundamental biology of pathogen-sensing and signaling by the RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs).