Oleta Johnson received her PhD in 2018 from the Program in Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan. Under the supervision of Dr. Amanda Garner, her graduate work focused on the development and application of chemical strategies to selectively modulate entropic transitions in intrinsically disordered proteins, with particular focus on 4E-BP1, a translational repressor known to be dysregulated in cancer, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.

As a postdoctoral scholar in the Gestwicki laboratory, Dr. Johnson’s current research utilizes a combination of genetic and pharmacological approaches to elucidate the mechanisms by which Hsp70 and its co-chaperones drive castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), and to develop small molecules with therapeutic potential for CRPC patients.