People

David F. Savage
Dave is a Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dave was born and raised in rural Iowa. He continues to help manage his family’s farm, which was recognized in 2010 as an Iowa Heritage Farm.  Dave attended Gustavus Adolphus College, where he earned a B.A. in Chemistry and minored in Computer Science.  He received his Ph.D. in 2007 from UCSF for his work on membrane protein structure determination with Robert Stroud.  From 2007 to 2011, Dave was a Life Sciences Research Foundation fellow with Pamela Silver in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.  

Research in the Savage Lab focuses on understanding and engineering two of the most compelling biochemical systems found in nature: CO2 fixation and genome editing enzyme machineries. Ultimately, this works seeks to develop enabling genome editing technology and apply it for improving photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in plants. For this work, Dave’s research has been recognized with the DOE Early Career Program Award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and he was selected for the 2018 “Future of Biochemistry” issue by ACS-Biochemistry. Dave is also an enthusiastic supporter of science capacity building and translation, and he is a co-creator of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory course on synthetic biology, a founding member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, co-creator of the African Plant Breeding Academy CRISPR Course and a co-founder of Scribe Therapeutics.

Email @ berkeley: savage

Dave's CV

Dev Desai

Dev is a graduate student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program. He is interested in the structure, function and engineering of rubisco.

E: dev_desai

David Ding

David is an NSF Research Fellow in the lab who obtained his PhD in protein evolution at Harvard/MIT. He is interested in developing high-throughput and computational methods to engineer biological systems to address sustainability goals.

E: davidding

Viktoriya Georgieva

Viktoriya is a technician working on the engineering of CRISPR-Cas proteins.

E: viktoriya

Carolina Guerrero

Carolina is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology and jointly advised by Jennifer Doudna. She is interested in CRISPR tool development.

E: carolina.guerrero

Drake Jimenez

Drake is a graduate student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program. He is interested in CRISPR tool development.

E: drake_jimenez

Maria Lukarska

Maria is a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellow in the lab who obtained her PhD in structural biology at EMBL. She is interested in using protein engineering to create more efficient and specific genetic engineering tools.

E: mlukarska

Luke Oltrogge

Luke is a project scientist in the lab who obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Stanford.  He is interested in the biophysical mechanisms driving the self-assembly of bacterial microcompartments, in particular the α-carboxysome.

E: luke.oltrogge

Jung-Un Park

Jung-Un is a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow in the lab who obtained his PhD in Chemistry from Cornell University. He is broadly interested in protein structure, function and engineering.

E: jungun.park

Naiya Phillips

Naiya is a graduate student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program. She is interested in characterizing the sequenc-function landscape of enzymes which use CO2.

E: naiyaphillips

Joseph Rivera

Joe is the Lab Manager.

E: josephr5462

Jorge Rodriguez

Jorge is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology.

E: rodriguez_jorge

Julia Tartaglia

Julia is a graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology and jointly advised by Jennifer Doudna. She is interested in high throughput strategies to engineer and advance the delivery of CRISPR proteins.

E: julia_tartaglia

Cynthia Terrace

Cynthia is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology. She is interested in CRISPR tool development.

E: cynthia_terrace

Flora Wang

Flora is a graduate student in Plant and Microbial Biology and is jointly advised by Krishna Niyogi.

E: florazhiqiwang

Rachel Weissman

Rachel is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology.

E: rfw