Fabiana Bahna

Fabiana Bahna is a Senior Staff Associate III at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Her research integrates molecular biology, structural biology, and immunology to address fundamental questions in neuroscience and infectious disease. Her recent work has elucidated the structural basis for pan-coronavirus inhibition of the 3CL protease, characterized the prefusion structure and neutralization mechanisms of HSV-1 glycoprotein B, and employed in silico free energy perturbation methods to engineer antibody Fc-FcRn variants. In neuroscience, she has investigated branch-specific axon pruning mediated by Dpr4/DIP-θ transneuronal interactions and demonstrated that astrocyte morphogenesis requires self-recognition via clustered protocadherins, published in Nature. Her broader contributions include using yeast display to enhance HIV-1 antibody neutralization breadth and exploring pH-dependent dimerization of the sevenless receptor tyrosine kinase.