Our Team
The Toronto Condensate Network is organized by faculty and trainees who share a passion for building a tight-knit condensate research community. We would love to have you join us!
TCN Leads
Julie Forman-Kay, PhD
Julie is a senior scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Hospital for Sick Children and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs), including roles in biomolecular condensates, bioinformatics, and structural ensemble descriptions. She is particularly excited about how IDRs in condensates create unique solvent environments, which drive localization and change conformational and binding equilibria to control biology.
Hyun Kate Lee, PhD
Kate is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on cellular stress mechanisms, how biomolecular condensates work and contribute to these processes, and using this knowledge to facilitate healthy recovery and improve disease states.
Advisory committee
Ji-Young Youn, PhD
Ji-Young is a Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, and an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Her lab applies quantitative proteomics methods to investigate the role of RNA-rich condensates and their dysregulation in human diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). She is interested in employing synthetic tools to manipulate RNA condensates to understand their functions and prevent their contributions to ALS.
Jonathon Ditlev, PhD
Jon is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on understanding how the composition and physical properties of biomolecular condensates dictate their function. We are interested in understanding how the emergent properties of membrane associated phase separated condensates regulate membrane receptor organization, channel activity, signal transduction, and dynamic structures in neurons, immune, and epithelial cells.
Science Talks Organizers
Gaddy Rakhaminov
Gaddy is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. His research in the Ditlev Lab focuses on using proteomics, microscopy and in-vitro assays to understand the function of the shank protein family and the impact disease associated variants have on the cytoskeleton.
Kiki Huang
Kiki is a PhD candidate in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Her research in the Youn lab focuses on using functional proteomics to understand the function of intrinsically disordered paralogs in translation and stress granule assembly.
Web Organizers
Sayantani Upadhyay
Sayantani is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research in the Forman-Kay lab is involves studying IDR interactions underlying condensate formation and regulation and how they are impacted by diesease mutations.
Haoxuan (Christoph) Qing
Christoph is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. His current research in the Forman-Kay lab is exploring the mechanism of an oncogenic fusion protein, EWS::FLI1, which initiates Ewing Sarcoma tumorigenesis.
Seminar Organizers
Rashik Ahmed, PhD
Rashik is a postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Lewis E. Kay and Julie D. Forman-Kay developing NMR methods to reveal how biomolecular condensates reshape protein structure, dynamics and interactions to regulate cellular function.
Zi Hao (Nemo) Liu
Zi Hao (Nemo) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. His research in the Forman-Kay lab focuses on the computational structural modeling of intrinsically disordered proteins and regions within different biological contexts.
If you're interested in joining the team, we'd love to hear from you!