Ron Diskin

Professor Diskin is an expert structural biologist with a strong background in virology and immunology. At Caltech, his main association will be with the Bjorkman Lab, where he shares interests in the structural biology of viruses, immune response, and therapeutics. He will also provide valuable input to the research of other structural biology and biochemistry labs at Caltech. Professor Diskin will work to establish integrative structural biology approaches for investigating conformational changes and dynamics of viral proteins during cell entry processes. Specifically, the main goal will be to enable the investigation of rare states not easily accessed using traditional structural biology approaches, a goal that is relevant to many labs within BBE and CCE. Ron Diskin obtained his B.S., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studying signal transduction pathways using biochemical and structural biology approaches. Following postdoct work at Caltech starting in 2007, he established his research group at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2012. The Diskin lab studies how hemorrhagic fever viruses, like the Lassa virus, enter cells and how the immune system targets these viruses. In 2020, Dr. Diskin was promoted to a tenured associate professor position.