GabriellA Heller

Dr Gabriella Heller is a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Discovery Fellow based in the Department of Structural and Molecular Biology at University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on targeting highly dynamic biomolecules called disordered proteins, which rapidly interconvert between different shapes.

Originally from Chicago, Dr Heller completed her MPhil in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar and remained there as a Gates Cambridge Scholar for her PhD with Professor Michele Vendruscolo. Following her graduate studies, she was Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. Throughout her time in Cambridge, she employed primarily computational methods (molecular dynamics simulations) to study disordered proteins and their interactions. In 2020, Dr Heller was awarded a Schmidt Science Fellowship which enabled her to pivot from computation to NMR at UCL with Professor D. Flemming Hansen. Now, as a Discovery Fellow, Dr Heller now combines her experimental and computational skills to develop new tools to study disordered proteins and their interactions with small molecules.