W. W. J. Gihan Perera

Gihan "Timo" Perera received his BS in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame. Gihan’s undergraduate research focused on investigating the activation of human sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 to delineate the associated intracellular signaling pathways that lead to ERK1/2 activation. His PhD work focused on the structural immunology of T cell receptor recognition. In the Baker lab, he uses structural, biophysical and computational techniques to understand the mechanisms underlying the immunogenicity of NRAS-derived public neoantigens and to characterize the specificity and cross-reactivity of TCRs that could be potential candidates for mutated NRAS-targeted cancer immunotherapy.