Past Speakers List

• 2023 Symposium Speakers

  Ruben L. Gonzalez Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, NY Titlte: “The Structural Dynamics of mRNA Activation During Eukaryotic Translation Initiation”

  Krishna Rajarathnam, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX Title: “Targeting Chemokine Interactions for Inflammatory Diseases – What Structures Can Tell U ”

  John A. Tainer, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX Title: “Defining and Hitting Moving Targets for Cancer Biology”

  David W. Taylor, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas, Austin, TX Title: “Reengineering CRISPR-Cas Effector Complexes”

  Junjie Zhang, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX Title: “Single-stranded RNA Phages: From Bacterial Lysis to Virulence Reduction”

• 2022 Symposium Speakers

  Xiaodong Cheng, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX Titlte: “Revisit of Inhibition of DNA Methylation by Non-nucleoside Analogs”

  Yang Gao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX Title: “Structural Basis of Hexameric Helicase Translocation”

  Olivier Lichtarge, Ph.D., Cullen Chair and Professor, Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston ,TX Title: “What Evolution Tells Us About Fitness Landscapes: From Structure and Function to Disease”

  Guy Nir, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX Title: “Super-resolution Studies of Genome Organization and its Possible Impact Over Gene Expression”

  Phoebe Rice, Ph.D., Professor, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL Titile: “Replication Machinery from the Microbial Mobilome: an MCM Family Helicase and a New Type of Primase”

• 2021 Symposium Speakers

  Bridget Carragher, Ph.D., Professor, Simons Electron Microscopy Center, New York Structural Biology Center, New York, NY Titlte: “CryoEM: Better, Faster, Cheaper”

  Michael Hagan, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Chair of Biological Physics, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Title: “Multiscale Computational Modeling of Self Assembling Protein Shells”

  George N. Phillips, Jr., Ph.D., Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor, BioSciences at Rice, Rice University, Houston, TX Title: “Structural Biology: Beyond Static Snapshots”

  Simon Scheuring, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology and Biophysics in Anesthesiology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY Title: “High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy: A Forceful Tool for Molecular Biophysics”

  Georgios Skiniotis, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Professor of Structural Biology and Photon Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Title: “Signaling Across the Membrane through G Protein-coupled Receptors”

  Pei-Yong Shi, Ph.D., Professor, I.H. Kempner Professor of Human Genetics, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX Title: “SARS-CoV-2 Biology and Countermeasure Development”

• 2019 Symposium Speakers

  Thomas E. Cheatham, III, PhD, Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, Director, Research Computing and CHPC, UIT, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT  Title: “Convergence, Reproducbility and Accuracy - There are Still Some Surprises in Modeling the Structure and Dynamics of Nucleic Acids”

  Edward H. Egelman, PhD, Harrison Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA  Title: “Cryo-EM of Helical Protein and Nucleoprotein Polymers at Near-Atomic Resolution”

  Matthieu G. Gagnon, PhD, Assistant Professor , Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Sealy Center for Structural Biology & Molecular Biophysics, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX  Title: “How RRF and tRNA Disassemble the Ribosome During Recycling”

  Karen Maxwell, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada  Title: “The Role of anti-CRISPRs in the Phage-Host Evolutionary Arms Race”

  Michael Sheetz, PhD, Director, Mechanobiology Institute, Distinguished Professor, Dept of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore  Title: ”Nanometer Level Matrix Structures Control Adhesion Clustering and Dynamics”

  Liang Tong, PhD, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Chair, Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY  Title: “Structural Studies of RNA 3’-end Processing Machineries”

• 2018 Symposium Speakers

  Grant Jense, Professor, Department of Biological Chemistry & Department of of Biophysics & Biology, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Title: “Progress and Challenges in Electron Cryotomography”

  Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Title: “Membrane-Assisted Dynamic Protein-Protein Interactions by NMR”

  Andrew Routh, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biolihysics, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX Title: “Parallel ClickSeq and Nanopore Deep-Sequencing Characterizes the Emergence and Evolution of Defective Viral Genomes”

  Joan-Emma Shea, Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA Title: “Binding and Assembly of Intrinsically Disordered Peptide”

  Yizhi Tao, Associate Professor, Department of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX Title: “The Tail of a Nematode Virus”

  Adam Zlotnick, Professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN Title: “Multiple Mechanisms for Assembly-Directed HBV Antivirals”