We are excited to announce that Dr. Green Ahn will join the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry and the Institute for Protein Design as an Assistant Professor in January 2027. She is the first in a planned cohort of new investigators who will stand up dedicated research verticals as protein design’s reach expands across application sectors.
Green is a chemical biologist and protein designer whose work sits at the intersection of molecular engineering, functional genomics, and cancer biology. Her research program will harness machine learning-guided protein design to build precision tools that decode and reprogram how cells process signals at their surfaces and interiors, with the ultimate goal of gaining discrete control over the cellular machinery that drives cancer progression, immune evasion, and more complex living systems.
Foundational Work
Green’s scientific trajectory reflects a sustained drive to make the extracellular and membrane proteome, the roughly 40% of protein-encoding genes that produce secreted and membrane-associated proteins, accessible to therapeutic intervention. As a graduate student with Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford University, Green co-developed lysosome targeting chimeras, a first-in-class platform for degrading extracellular and membrane proteins that are inaccessible to conventional small-molecule degraders. She went on to engineer the first tissue-specific extracellular degraders and conducted the first unbiased mechanistic study of the approach through a genome-wide CRISPR screen, revealing design principles for more effective degraders and uncovering fundamental biology of receptor trafficking—work published in Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, and Science.
During her postdoctoral training at the IPD, Green brought this deep mechanistic intuition to de novo protein design. She was a key contributor to the development of EndoTags, designed endocytosis-triggering proteins that expanded the scope of targeted extracellular degradation to orthogonal receptor sites and demonstrated in vivo efficacy in tumor models, with AND-gate logic enabling cell-type-specific targeting. She also led the development of computational approaches for rationally encoding pH sensitivity into designed proteins, producing proteins that act selectively in acidic vesicles and the tumor microenvironment, principles now being applied to catalytic degradation strategies and conditional activation in the tumor microenvironment. In a large-scale effort pairing computational design with cellular functional screening, she co-established a platform for discovering de novo biological tools by quantitatively screening roughly 10,000 designed proteins that recruit diverse degradation machinery inside cells.
Protein Design for Cancer Therapy
As an independent investigator, Green’s lab will push into largely uncharted territory: using designed proteins to develop precise biological agents for uncovering complex cell biology and addressing unmet needs in cancer and immune response. Across each of her directions, the through line is building proteins that go beyond binding to achieve programmable function, and using those tools to expose fundamental biology that existing approaches cannot reach.
“I’m thrilled to be launching my lab at the IPD, which is truly the epicenter of protein design methods development,” said Ahn. “The caliber of scientists here, from the computational and experimental trainees to the faculty, creates an environment where ambitious ideas can move from concept to functional molecule faster than anywhere else. Seattle’s growing community at the intersection of AI and the life sciences makes this an incredibly exciting place to build a research program right now. I can’t wait to recruit creative, driven people at every career stage who want to use protein design to solve problems in cancer and immunity that we simply couldn’t approach before.”
Green’s honors reflect the breadth and impact of her work. She is a recipient of the 2026 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (CASI), which provides $560,000 over five years, bridging postdoctoral training and early faculty career. She is an HHMI Postdoctoral Fellow of the Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research, a Yosemite Venture Investigator Awardee, an MIT Biology Catalyst Symposium Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, among other distinctions.
Building a New Lab
The Ahn Lab is now accepting applications from postdoctoral candidates, University of Washington graduate students, and research technicians in the Seattle area. If you are interested in using machine learning-guided protein design to gain precise control over cellular signaling and develop new strategies for cancer therapy, reach out to greenahn@uw.edu.
The lab will officially open in January 2027.
Green is the first of an upcoming cohort of exceptional new investigators joining the IPD to lead the future of protein design across diverse application spaces—stay tuned.
