Interdisciplinary Experience to Answer Complex Questions
Conner Hawkins (PhD ’26) researched how cells translate small differences in molecular signals into distinct biological outcomes.
When Conner Hawkins (BS ’21, PhD ’26) entered UT as an undergraduate student he wanted to become a medical doctor. He was drawn to help people through medicine but chose a different path. Now Hawkins is a postdoctoral researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
“My direction began to change as I was introduced to science more broadly,” Hawkins said. “I came to understand that the ideas we now accept as established facts did not simply appear in textbooks. They were discovered by people who were willing to confront questions for which no answer yet existed. Scientists were actively pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and producing ideas that could eventually transform how we understand biology, disease, and ourselves. Once I recognized that, I was hooked.”
Hawkins became fascinated by the process of research, in which every day can present a new puzzle, often with several possible ways to approach it. “You have to decide what explanation is most plausible, design an experiment capable of distinguishing among competing possibilities, and then adapt when the result is not what you expected. At its best, that process reveals something about the inner workings of life that was not understood before,” he noted.
Remaining at UT for graduate school offered the opportunity to work with scientists in a collaborative and diverse environment while also taking advantage of the university’s proximity to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “This access allows for complex questions to be answered through combining interdisciplinary approaches from experts spanning structural biology, molecular biology, genomics, cell biology, computational analysis, and biochemistry,” Hawkins said.
As an undergraduate he had become interested in how biological molecules acquire function through physical principles. Proteins’ structures, motions, interactions, and possible functions are constrained by chemistry and physics. “What interested me was how biological systems have evolved to exploit those constraints to recognize signals and generate specific responses,” he said.
That interest led him to the laboratory of Associate Professor Elias Fernandez, who trained as a physical chemist and whose laboratory investigates how proteins integrate different signals and how those signals alter their structural and biophysical properties. “When I joined the laboratory, he and a colleague had been discussing a broader question: Do the changes observed in isolated environments, outside of a cell, actually influence how those proteins behave inside cells? That question became the foundation of my graduate research,” Hawkins said.
He focused on how cells translate small differences in molecular signals into distinct biological outcomes. “I study nuclear hormone receptors, transcription factors that respond to molecules such as hormones and regulate gene expression,” Hawkins said. “Rather than acting as simple on-and-off switches, these receptors integrate information from the ligand, the DNA they bind, their protein partners, and the surrounding cellular environment. By combining structural, genomic, and proteomic approaches, my work seeks to understand how these inputs shape receptor behavior and, ultimately, produce different gene-expression programs.”
Because nuclear receptors are common drug targets, understanding how they generate specific cellular responses may help guide the development of more precise therapies.
When Hawkins was an undergraduate, he was fascinated by the Monod–Wyman–Changeux model of allostery, which describes how proteins can shift among different functional states. “After our work connected ligand-dependent allostery to genome-wide changes in nuclear hormone receptor binding and gene regulation, Jean-Pierre Changeux personally reached out to congratulate us,” he said. “Having one of the scientists whose work helped establish the concept that inspired me recognize our research was both surreal and deeply meaningful.”
Outside the laboratory, Hawkins enjoys hiking and rock climbing. “Climbing requires many of the same skills that shape how I approach research: carefully evaluating a problem, testing different solutions, learning from failed attempts, and adapting until a path forward becomes clear. Together, these activities have helped me become a more patient, persistent, and creative scientist,” he said.