AlexandraWhiteley, PhD

Alex did her undergraduate education at Davidson College in North Carolina where she did research on reoviruses in the laboratory of Dr. David Wessner and spent summers studying the formation of Ultrabithorax-based biomaterials at Rice University in the laboratory of Dr. Sarah Bondos.

From 2008-2013, Alex completed her PhD at the University of California San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. Jeoung-Sook Shin, Associate Professor of Immunology, studying the trafficking of the high affinity IgE receptor, FcERI, in human dendritic cells (DCs).

Following the completion of her doctorate in 2013, Alex completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Brown, VP of Infectious Diseases and Immunology. There, she studied the role of UBQLN1 in B cell proliferation.

Based on her findings at Genentech, Alex was awarded a Cancer Research Institute Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2016 to continue her work on UBQLNs at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Finley, Professor of Cell Biology. There, she continued studying the role of UBQLN1 in B cell lymphomas and began working on UBQLN2 in neurodegenerative disease.

The Alex Whiteley lab opened at CU Boulder in January 2020 with the goal of understanding the regulation of protein degradation by UBQLNs and their role in cellular and organismal health.

Does Alex have hobbies? Nobody knows. But people sometimes see her enjoying a neighborhood playground stroll with her husband, Aaron, and sons Malcolm and Cameron.