ACA SIG Officer Candidate 2021: Jake Johnston

My name is Jake Johnston and I am currently working on a Phd at Columbia University, where I spend most of my time doing cryo-EM. The free time I do get, I try to enjoy the little things here at New York. After finishing rotations last year as a first year PhD student, I ended up joining Bridgett Carraghers and Clinton Potters lab at NYSBC/SEMC, where I am working on solving macromolecular structures from cells using Cryo-ET. As such, I have been working to push the boundaries of the field, by optimizing the methodologies required to obtain high-resolution in situ structures. This has been a very challenging undertaking, though has proven to be quite fun as well!

My master’s and undergraduate work was done at a small university in Montana, which made it difficult to truly gain the access and resources required to learn cryo-EM. I was fortunate enough to be under a training grant during my Master’s that allowed me to work at SLAC where I was able to overcome this limitation . During my master’s, having the access to many conferences and workshops proved very beneficial in learning single-particle cryo-EM as such, I understand the importance of outreach in conferences and teaching workshops. If elected I would be ecstatic toward attracted other young scientists toward cryo-EM!