Baek Kim, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Microbiology and Immunology

Baek_Kim@URMC.Rochester.edu

Office: (585) 275-6916

Dr. Baek Kim received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1993 in Biochemistry working with Dr. John Little.  He received his post-doctoral training at the University of Washington working under the direction of Dr. Lawrence Loeb beginning his first work on HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase.  Dr. Kim came to the University of Rochester in 1998, joining the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Baek's faculty page for the Department of Microbiology and Immunology

Click here for Dr. Kim's Biosketch (pdf)

(Link requires Acrobat Reader.  Click here to get Acrobat Reader from Adobe)

Pauline Chugh, MS

Graduate Student - Microbiology and Immunology

Pauline_Chugh@URMC.Rochester.edu

Pauline received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Millikin University in June, 2003 and came to the University of Rochester the following fall.  She is researching viral hijacking of cellular signal pathways, specifically, the role of HIV-1 Tat protein in viral infections.

Pauline is funded by the Microbial Pathogenesis of Bacteria and Viruses Training Grant (NIH T32 AI007362).  Click here for a description.

Michelle Crandall

Graduate Student - Microbiology and Immunology

Michelle_Crandall@URMC.Rochester.edu

Michelle earned a bachelors degree in Biology from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2003.  She became a lab technician in the Kim research group in Fall of the same year and is now a graduate student in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Varuni Jamburuthugoda, MS

Graduate Student - Biochemistry

Varuni_Jamburuthugoda@URMC.Rochester.edu

Varuni comes to the University of Rochester by way of the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka.  There, she earned a bachelors degree in Biochemistry and Molecular biology in 2002.  She came to the University of Rochester that fall and joined the Kim research group in early 2003.  Her current research involves characterization of dNTP binding mutant HIV-1 reverse transcriptases in in vitro systems.

Darwin J. Operario, MS

Graduate Student - Microbiology and Immunology

Darwin_Operario@URMC.Rochester.edu

Darwin graduated with honors from the University of California at Davis with a BS in Genetics in 2000.  Before coming to the University of Rochester in 2002, he was a lab technician at the UC Davis School of Medicine under Dr. Michael Seldin.  Darwin joined the Kim Lab in 2003.  His current research involves characterizing the reverse transcriptases of FIV and FeLV as they relate to RT fidelity and cell-type specificity.

CRISP entry - F31 Darwin Operario (NIH F31 AI056668-02)

Holly M. Reynolds

Graduate Student - Microbiology and Immunology

Holly_Reynolds@URMC.Rochester.edu

Holly earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the Rochester Institute of Technology in June, 2002.  That summer, she joined the Kim research group as a laboratory technician.  She is now a graduate student in the department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Jose Santos

PREP trainee

Jose_Santos@URMC.Rochester.edu

The newest addition to the Kim Lab, Jose comes to the University of Rochester from Puerto Rico.  He earned his Bachelors Degree in General Science in 2005 and also earned a certificate in medical technology both from the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.

Mark Skasko, MS

Graduate Student - Microbiology and Immunology

Mark_Skasko@URMC.Rochester.edu

An Upstate New York native, Mark earned a Bachelors degree in Biology from Clarkson University in 2003.  Mark came to the University of Rochester the same year.  His current research involves in vitro characterization of HIV and SIV RTs in relation to viral fidelity and cell-type specificity.

Click here for Previous Lab Members