Rate My Professor Paula Fischhaber

Paula Louise Fischhaber is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University, Northridge, positions she has held since 2016 and 2025, respectively. She joined CSUN in 2005 as Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, and to full Professor in 2016. Prior to CSUN, she held positions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, including Research Assistant Professor of Pathology (2004-2005), Instructor of Pathology (2003-2004), and Postdoctoral Fellow (1998-2003). Fischhaber earned her B.A. in Biochemistry, magna cum laude, from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1992 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1998. She has received numerous honors, including a National Research Service Award F32 postdoctoral fellowship (1999-2002), membership on the Editorial Board of DNA Repair (2004-2024), Phi Beta Kappa induction (1991), Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (1991), and Boettcher Foundation Scholar (1988-1992).

Fischhaber's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of DNA repair pathways in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, particularly the temporal and spatial recruitment of end-processing factors such as Rad10, Saw1, and SLX4 during double-strand break repair, nucleotide excision repair, and single-strand annealing. As Principal Investigator, she has secured over $2.5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health MBRS SCORE program, including SC1 GM127204 for 'SLX4 in Nuclease Recruitment' (2018-2024, $1,359,096), SC3 GM093858 for 'Recruitment of End-Processing Factors in DSB Repair' (2014-2018, $409,125), and earlier grants on Rad10 recruitment and protein relationships in nucleotide excision repair. Her peer-reviewed publications include 'Synthesis and Characterization of Amorphous Lawsone Polymer Dots for Fluorescent Applications' (ACS Applied Nano Materials, 2023), 'SAW1 is Increasingly Required to Recruit Rad10 as SSA Flap-Length Increases from 20-50 Base Pairs in Single-Strand Annealing in S. cerevisiae' (Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports, 2021), 'Saw1 Localizes to Repair Sites but is not Required for Recruitment of Rad10 to Repair Intermediates Bearing Short Non-Homologous 3′ Flaps during Single-Strand Annealing in S. cerevisiae' (Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 2016), and 'Rad51 ATP Binding but not Hydrolysis is Required to Recruit Rad10 in Synthesis-Dependent Strand Annealing in S. cerevisiae' (Advances in Biological Chemistry, 2013). She has also contributed to intradepartmental grants and infrastructure development, such as the CSUPERB-funded Instructional Tissue Culture Facility (2007-2008).