Personal Bio:

Steve L. Bonilla is an Assistant Professor and HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow at The Rockefeller University, where he leads the Laboratory of RNA Structural Biology and Biophysics. He is also a faculty member of the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB).

Steve was born and raised in Guatemala City, where he obtained a technical degree in electronic design. At age 19, he moved to the United States. He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington, training in the laboratory of Dr. Qiuming Yu, where he worked on the development of portable biosensors based on surface plasmon resonance. As an undergraduate Amgen Scholar, Steve performed research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Steve earned his PhD from Stanford University in 2019 under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Herschlag. As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Herschlag lab, he employed single-molecule biophysical and high-throughput methods to contribute to the development of predictive models of RNA 3D structure, thermodynamic stability, and conformational dynamics. For his postdoctoral studies, Steve joined the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Kieft at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. There, he used single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to visualize the 3D structures of viral RNA elements that mimic tRNA to hijack the biochemical machinery of their host and to dissect intermediates in the folding landscapes of catalytic RNAs, or ribozymes.

As an independent researcher at Rockefeller, Steve is interested in understanding how the dynamic nature of RNA 3D structure is exploited by RNA viruses to regulate their life cycles. RNAs are remarkably versatile molecules that function in diverse cellular and viral processes; this functional versatility is highly dependent on RNA’s ability to simultaneously encode genetic information and form dynamic 3D structures. However, despite the importance of RNA structure-function relationships, our understanding of how RNA 3D structures form and function is still in its infancy.

Steve is committed to training and mentoring the next generation of diverse PhD students and postdocs, helping them pursue important biological questions rigorously and responsibly while supporting their career development.