Invited Speakers
Venki Ramakrishnan has a long-standing interest in ribosome structure and function. In 2000, his laboratory determined the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its complexes with ligands and antibiotics. This work has led to insights into how the ribosome “reads” the genetic code, as well as into various aspects of antibiotic function. In the last few years, Ramakrishan’s lab has determined the high-resolution structures of functional complexes of the entire ribosome at various stages along the translational pathway, which has led to insights into its role in protein synthesis during decoding, peptidyl transfer, translocation and termination. More recently his laboratory has been applying cryoelectron microscopy to study eukaryotic and mitochondrial translation. Since 1999, he has been on the scientific staff of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
Venki Ramakrishnan
2009 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
Jonathan Abraham is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. He is a molecular virologist, structural biologist, and physician-scientist. He has spent all his career studying the spike proteins of emerging RNA viruses. These proteins play the critical role of attaching viruses to receptors found on host cells during the first step of the infectious cycle. The Abraham lab uses X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to study how spike proteins interact with cellular receptors and how antibodies can bind spike proteins to interfere with viral infectivity.
Jonathan obtained his B.A. in biochemical sciences at Harvard University in 2005, his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University in 2010, and his medical degree at Harvard Medical School in 2012. He then completed internal medicine residency at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and infectious diseases fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital combined program, before starting his independent research group in 2017.
A/Prof Jonathan Abraham
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Mohammed AlQuraishi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Biology and a member of Columbia’s Program for Mathematical Genomics, where he works at the intersection of machine learning, biophysics, and systems biology. The AlQuraishi Lab focuses on two biological perspectives: the molecular and systems levels. On the molecular side, the lab develops machine learning models for predicting protein structure and function, protein-ligand interactions, and learned representations of proteins and proteomes. On the systems side, the lab applies these models in a proteome-wide fashion to investigate the organization, combinatorial logic, and computational paradigms of signal transduction networks, how these networks vary in human populations, and how they are dysregulated in human diseases, particularly cancer.
Dr. AlQuraishi holds undergraduate degrees in biology, computer science, and mathematics. He earned an MS in statistics and a PhD in genetics from Stanford University. He subsequently joined the Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School as a Departmental Fellow and a Fellow in Systems Pharmacology, where he developed the first end-to-end differentiable model for learning protein structure from data. Prior to starting his academic career, Dr. AlQuraishi spent three years founding two startups in the mobile computing space. He joined the Columbia Faculty in 2020.
A/Prof Mohammed AlQuraishi
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
David Craik (AO, FRS, FAA) is a Professor at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science. His research focuses on applications of cyclic peptides and toxins in drug design. He is recipient of a number of prizes in the peptide field, including the du Vigneaud Award of the American Peptide Society and the Hirschmann Award of the American Chemical Society. He is author of more than 840 papers and has trained 70 PhD students.
David Craik
THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
Ana J. García Sáez is a full professor at the Institute for Genetics, University of Cologne, Germany where she has been a faculty member since 2019. She previously held a full professorship at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her primary areas of investigation include Cell Death & Biophysics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Biochemistry & Advanced Microscopy. Her studies deal with areas such as Vesicle, Lipid bilayer, Apoptosis and Bcl-2 family as well as Cell biology. She has researched Lipid bilayer in several fields, including Membrane fluidity and Plasma protein binding. She published numerous high rank scientific articles, and has been a member of multiple research networks.
Professor Ana García-Sáez
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE
Jeanne A. Hardy, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst earned a B.S./M.S. at Utah State University, a Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley and was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow Tokyo Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the faculty at UMass Amherst in 2005, Hardy worked at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals which centrally influenced her research. Her lab works exclusively on proteases from humans and human pathogens with the goal to understand the relationship of their structure to their function, thus guiding development of novel inhibitors for treatment of human disease. Hardy has won awards including a Beckman Young Investigator Award, The Mahoney Life Science Prize, a Fulbright and is director of an NIH T32 Biotechnology Doctoral Training Program.
Professor Jeanne Hardy
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
(Protein Society Speaker)
Lisa M. Jones is the Chancellor’s Associate Endowed Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California San Diego. Her research is focused on extending the protein footprinting method fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP) coupled with mass spectrometry to studying protein structure in complex model systems. Her lab has extended the method for in-cell analysis to provide structural information across the proteome. Her lab aims to understand the biological causes of health disparities in cancer and other diseases. She also has a passion for increasing diversity in STEM and participates in several outreach initiatives to achieve this.
Professor Lisa Jones
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
Prof. Kam-Bo Wong received his PhD from the University of Cambridge working with Professor Alan Fersht. During his Ph.D. training with Prof. Fersht and post-doc training with Prof. Valerie Daggett of the University of Washington, he focused on combining simulations and experiments to understand protein folding and dynamics. He started his independent research at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1999 and he is currently the Director of the School of Life Sciences. His main research focus is the urease maturation pathway. Combining structure determination with biochemical/biophysical/mutagenesis studies, his research group is working on how cells solve the problem of delivering the toxic nickel ion to the active site of urease.
Professor WONG Kam Bo
THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
Klevit received a Chemistry D. Phil. at Oxford University as Oregon’s first female Rhodes Scholar. Following post-doctoral training at Duke University, she joined the faculty at University of Washington. An early pioneer in protein NMR, she uses biochemical, biophysical, and structural approaches to address fundamental questions in biology. Her studies established many of the current paradigms in the Ubiquitin field. Recently, the Klevit lab defined a concept dubbed “quasi-order” to describe small heat shock proteins which contain substantial intrinsic disorder. Klevit’s accomplishments are recognized through numerous awards and election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Professor Rachel Klevit
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Sheena Radford is the Astbury Professor of Biophysics and Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Leeds. Her work focuses on fundamental structural molecular biology, specifically the measurement of conformational dynamics of proteins and the role these play in protein folding and misfolding, using a wide range of biochemical and biophysical methods.
She has published over 320 peer-reviewed journal papers, given over 430 invited lectures in 25 countries, successfully supervised 90 PhD students and 67 postdoctoral researchers, and serves on many boards and panels. Her numerous awards include FRS, FMedSci and OBE.
Professor Sheena Radford
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Michael Rapé received his PhD at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany, before he joined Marc Kirschner’s lab at Harvard Medical School for his postdoctoral studies. In 2006, Michael joined the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is currently Head of the Division of Molecular Therapeutics and the Dr. K. Peter Hirth Chair of Cancer Biology. Michael is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Michael’s lab uncovers molecular mechanisms of cell fate determination, using posttranslational modification with ubiquitin as their starting point. This work revealed new ubiquitin chain types, essential ubiquitylation enzymes and substrates, as well as mechanisms of ubiquitylation that are essential for human development and disease. His work has been recognized with a Pew Scholar’s Award, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, the National Blavatnik Award, and an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Michael has recently been elected as foreign member of EMBO.
His work led to the first prospective development of a molecular glues targeting E3 ligases, which helped in opening up the ubiquitin system for drug discovery. To advance ubiquitin-focused approaches in drug discovery, Michael co-founded Nurix Therapeutics, Zenith Therapeutics, and Lyterian Therapeutics. Michael is also an iPartner at The Column Group Ventures.
Professor Michael Rapé
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
Dave Pagliarini is the Hugo F. and Ina C. Distinguished Professor and BJC Investigator at Washington University School of Medicine where he leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating leading-edge challenges in mitochondrial biochemistry and metabolism. In particular, Dave’s lab blends large-scale systems approaches with mechanistic biochemistry to define the molecular underpinnings of mitochondria dysfunction in human disease. For this work, Dave has received a Searle Scholar Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Young Investigator award from the Protein Society, and the Earl and Thressa Stadtman Young Scholar Award from the ASBMB.
Professor David Pagliarini
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN ST.LOUIS
Petra Schwille studied physics and philosophy and graduated 1993 at the Georg August University, Göttingen. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1996 from the TU Braunschweig, with a thesis performed at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, with Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen. After a postdoctoral stay at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, she returned to the MPI Göttingen as a research group leader in 1999. In 2002, she accepted a Chair of Biophysics at the TU Dresden. Since 2012, she is heading the department Cellular and Molecular Biophysics at the MPI of Biochemistry and Honorary Professor of Physics at LMU Munich.
Professor Petra Schwille
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF BIOCHEMISTRY
(The EMBO Keynote Lecture)
Nicholas Taylor is an associate professor at the (NNF Center for Protein Research, at the University of Copenhagen). His research group investigates how large molecular machines, such as bacteriophages, can transport molecules across cell barriers, and since recently, how cells can protect themselves against these systems. Apart from shedding light on the molecular basis of this biological tug-of-war, his group also hopes to contribute to novel strategies for molecular delivery which could ultimately lead to new applications in biotechnology or biomedicine. To achieve these goals, they use a combination of cryo-electron microscopy, structural bioinformatics and functional studies.
A/Prof Nicholas Taylor
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
(The EMBO Young Investigator Lecture)
Satellite Meeting Speakers
My training took me from rotational diffusion in membranes, to virus fusion, to cell biology. On appointment at University of Liverpool, my first steps were taken in phosphoinositide regulation of endosomal membrane dynamics, most notably we discovered the substrate specificity of the the myotubularin family lipid phosphatases. More recently, ubiquitin biology, with a focus on the deubiquitylating enzymes and putting them on the map as drug targets. Currently I am interested in organelle quality control, with a side hustle on immune checkpoint receptor trafficking. I also like numbers.
Michael Clague
UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
Dr Manuela Jörg is a Monash and Newcastle University Research Fellow based at the Monash Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences. She obtained a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Monash University, in addition to a Bachelor and Masters in Chemistry at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and the University of Basel, respectively. Her research aims to improving our understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying diseases and drug interactions. Specifically, my group is interested in the design of novel chemical probes to study protein degradation, receptor dimerisation and antibody delivery systems.
Dr Manuela Jörg
MONASH INSTITUTE FOR PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
Sylvie Urbé is a cell biologist from Luxembourg who studied at the University of Heidelberg, Germany and was trained at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL; ultrastructural localisation and function of Rab GTPases) and Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, UK (cell-free assays of secertory granule maturation). She was awarded successive Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK Research Fellowships to study the endo-lysosomal protein sorting machinery and associated DUBs at the University of Liverpool where she now holds a Professorship. Her current interests still have a membrane traffic and organelle biology flavour, with ubiquitin-modifying enzymes (DUBs and E3 ligases) a constant theme in ongoing projects.
Sylvie Urbé
UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
Hsueh-Chi Sherry Yen is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Molecular Biology at Academia Sinica and a Professor of the Genome Science Degree Program at National Taiwan University. She was awarded a Ph.D. from New York University and was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School. She has a long-standing interest in understanding ubiquitin-proteasome-mediated protein degradation. Specifically, she has developed GPS (global protein stability) profiling technology for high-throughput characterizations of protein degradation in living cells and she pioneered the discovery of C-degron pathways (C-end rule) that play a critical role in the elimination of erroneous proteins that arise from translation errors, protein missegregation and proteolytic cleavage.
Hsueh-Chi Sherry Yen
INSTITUTE OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AT THE ACADEMIA SINICA
