Molly Ohainle | AIChE

Molly Ohainle

Assistant Professor
UC Berkeley

Molly Ohainle, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Immunology and Molecular Medicine in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. As a virologist with an interest in bioengineering, Dr. Ohainle uses functional genomics, including an HIV-specific CRISPR screening method she created, as well as molecular virology tools to explore basic mechanisms of viral replication, host antiviral effector function and virus adaptation to host cell barriers. Dr. Ohainle obtained her B.S. in Biological Sciences from UC Davis and her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington. During her Ph.D. training as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow with Michael Emerman and Harmit Malik at the Fred Hutch Dr. Ohainle studied the evolution and function of APOBEC3 cytidine deminases that restrict retroviral infection. As a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Eva Harris at UC Berkeley, Dr. Ohainle studied how immunity and viral genetics contribute to disease outcomes in dengue virus infection. In 2014 Dr. Ohainle returned to the Fred Hutch as a Senior Staff Scientist and Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington to develop functional genomics tools to define cellular barriers to infection by HIV and related viruses. In 2021 Dr. Ohainle was named a Leading Edge New Faculty Fellow. Dr. Ohainle’s research aims to define the molecular bases of how host antiviral genes block infection by viruses as well as to understand how viruses adapt to and evade these host cell restrictions.