Anastassia Vorobieva

Anastassia Vorobieva is interested in understanding the molecular principles of membrane protein folding and applying them to protein engineering and design. She completed a PhD (2014) in directed evolution of enzyme in the laboratory of Patrice Soumillion in UCLouvain, Belgium. After her PhD, she did a post-doctoral training in the laboratory of David Baker at the University of Washington (Seattle), where she developed new computational methods to design from first principles (i) complex beta-barrel folds; (ii) protein binders to small-molecules of interest and (iii) beta-barrels folding into lipid membranes. She then undertook a second post-doctor in the laboratory of Bruno Correia at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne (Switzerland), continuing to work on computational protein design (of metalloenzyme and transmembrane receptors switches). She joined the VUB-VIB Center of Structural Biology as a Junior PI in 2021. Her group focuses on developing both computational and high-throughput screening tools to engineer transmembrane beta-barrels with novel properties, with the aims of gaining a deeper insight into membrane protein folding using emerging approaches such as synthetic proteins and computational models.