July 2026
Emily has her last day as a research assistant with our lab! She’s going to begin her PhD journey with the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at NYU this fall. Thanks for your all of your research, hard work, and simply being part of our lab community. Good luck!!
July 2026
Chistopher Anchan joins the lab from the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program for his graduate work. Welcome!!
June 2026
Celebrating the lab’s current affairs (New members! New fellowships and funding! Graduate school acceptances! A preprint! A wedding!) with Italian food and minigolf! Thank you to Lorena and Manija for organizing!
June 2026
The lab’s first story!
Lorena, Taka, Miro, Emily, and Steve post their preprint “RNA 3D Motif Dynamics Guide Assembly of the Replication Initiation Complex in Flaviviruses” on BioRxiv! Thank you as well to collaborators Dr. Dom Olinares and Dr. Linas Urnavicius (Rockefeller), as well as Prof. Danny Incarnato (University of Groningen). Congratulations everyone!
June 2026
Steve is named a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts! Congratulations Steve!!
June 2026
Joshua Almonte, a PhD student from the Thiede Lab at Cornell University, joins as a visiting scholar!
June 2026
Raymond passes his qualifying exam to become a PhD candidate!
June 2026
Tom Xu from the David Rockefeller Graduate Program joins the lab!
June 2026
Yichu Huang joins the lab as a research assistant!
June 2026
Peter Zhang, a PhD student from the BioSim Lab at the University of Buffalo, joins as a visiting scholar!
May 2026
Steve, Lorena, and Deb present their work at the 31st annual RNA Society Meeting in Montréal, with Lorena selected for an oral presentation!
February 2026
Miro is awarded with a Rockefeller postdoctoral fellowship! Congratulations!!
October 2025
Steve is selected as a 2025 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Freeman Hrabowski Scholar! This is huge for the lab, congratulations Steve!!!
October 2025
Our entry to the Rockefeller pumpkin carving contest!
It’s an… RNase (the terror!)
October 2025
Taka delivers a talk on his work at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Institute Young Scientist Forum lecture series!
September 2025
Miro Astore joins the lab as a postdoctoral fellow from the Simons Foundation!
August 2025
Viktor Bonin joins the lab as a visiting master’s student from Heidelberg University!
August 2025
Steve is a keynote speaker at the 22nd annual Tri-Institutional Chemical Biology Symposium, and Emily wins a Nature Chemical Biology-sponsored poster prize!
July 2025
A joint BBQ between the Bonilla & Sakmar labs outside RU Faculty Club! Thank you to Chris, Lorena, and Manija for organizing the get-together!
June 2025
Lorena passes her qualifying exam! Congratulations on the candidacy!
June 2025
Raymond Lam from the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB) joins the lab as a graduate fellow in chemical biology!
May 2025
Lorena represents the lab by delivering a talk at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Institute Young Scientist Forum lecture series!
March 2025
Lorena is awarded with the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD Fellowship. Congratulations Lorena!!
February 2025
Caroline is awarded a Women in Science at Rockefeller (WISeR) postdoctoral fellowship. Congratulations Caroline!!
February 2025
Takashi Onikubo joins the lab as a research specialist!
November 2024
Emily Cioppa joins the lab as a research assistant!
November 2024
The lab hitting the Rockefeller pickleball courts (sans Steve, he was missed!)
October 2024
Karen and Steve publish a review review titled “Challenges, advances, and opportunities in RNA structural biology by Cryo-EM” in Current Opinion in Structural Biology!
October 2024
Steve publishes a review with Prof. Alisha Jones (NYU) and Prof. Danny Incarnato (University of Groningen) titled “Structural and biophysical dissection of RNA conformational ensembles” in Current Opinion in Structural Biology!
June 2024
Lorena Streit joins the lab from the David Rockefeller Graduate Program and becomes the lab’s 1st PhD student!
March 2024
Kartikeya Nagendra joins as a postdoctoral associate!
February 2024
Debanjana Maji joins as a joint postdoctoral visiting fellow with the Simons Foundation and the New York Structural Biology Center!
February 2024
Steve receives an Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trust research award for the lab! Congratulations Steve!!
December 2023
Over the past two months, Deena Oren (Director of Rockefeller’s Structural Biology Resource Center) taught Karen to purify proteins and imparted wisdom for life and the lab. We are lucky to have trained with Deena, and these photos are from Deena’s retirement party at Faculty Club.
October 2023
Manija Kazmi joins us as a Lab Manager. She is also the lab manager of the Sakmar lab, our beloved neighbors. We are very lucky to have Manija’s help, she has been with Rockefeller for a long time and knows everything. Thank you, Manija!
October 2023
Karen Jang joins the lab as a Research Assistant and becomes the first member of the lab. Welcome Karen!
October 2023
The Bonilla lab opens its doors on the 5th floor of the Rockefeller Research Building (RRB). We are honored to occupy the lab space that was previously used by the great Günter Blobel (1936 - 2018), a Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology. We are also very lucky to have Prof. Tom Sakmar and his team as our neighbors, they are great!
