Daniela Nicastro

Daniela Nicastro is a structural cell biologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where she holds a tenured Associate Professor position in the Departments of Cell Biology and Biophysics. Her research focuses on visualizing 3D ultrastructures of cellular organelles, particularly cilia and flagella, using cryo-electron tomography. She has pioneered techniques to study native macromolecular machines and organelles at molecular resolution, advancing understanding of their roles in health and disease.

Dr. Nicastro earned her M.S. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) in Biology from Ludwig-Maximilians University (Munich, Germany), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Boulder. She joined Brandeis University in 2006 as an Assistant Professor, advancing to tenured Associate Professor by 2013. Her lab contributed critical advances in cryo-EM methodologies and multi-scale structural studies of ciliary and flagellar systems.

Her research interests include ciliary motility regulation, structural basis of disease (e.g., ciliary dyskinesia), and visualization of nuclear machines in cancer contexts. Current work explores nuclear ciliary complexes and lipid droplet biogenesis mechanisms. She leads the Nicastro Lab, which combines cutting-edge microscopy with biochemical analyses to uncover cellular ultrastructure-function relationships.