2026 VAI Structural Biology Symposium

Dr. Huilin Li studies how cells copy DNA, build and modify proteins, and maintain their internal health — processes that are essential for life and often disrupted in disease. His work reveals how these molecular systems function at the most fundamental level, providing insights relevant to major public health challenges such as tuberculosis, cancer and neurological disorders. Dr. Li has been a leader in visualizing complex biological machinery for more than three decades.

Dr. Travis Walton studies the cellular cytoskeleton, which provides structure and stability to cells. Problems with this critical architecture can contribute to a wide range of human diseases. Dr. Walton’s lab uses leading-edge imaging technologies to identify vulnerabilities in the cytoskeleton that can lead to novel diagnostic and therapeutic targets.

Dr. Yang Yang employs the latest imaging technologies to illuminate how disease-related proteins misfold and assemble in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Her research has revealed the structures of critical protein filaments found in patient brain tissue, and provides fundamental insights that can inform the development of improved diagnostic and treatment strategies.

Dr. Gongpu Zhao joined Van Andel Institute in 2016, where he helped launch the Cryo-EM Core and facilitate its development into a central resource for structural biology research. He came from a postdoctoral fellowship in the Peijun Zhang Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he played a leading role in determining the structure of the HIV-1 capsid, the outer “shell” of the virus. At Van Andel Institute, Dr. Zhao focuses on advancing cryo-electron microscopy technologies, with particular emphasis on developing new sample preparation workflows, in situ cryo-ET methods and imaging strategies that enable high-resolution structural analysis.

Dr. Z. Hong Zhou is a pioneering structural biologist specializing in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) and cryogenic electron tomography (cryoET). Trained as a nuclear physicist (B.S. and M.S., University of Science and Technology of China), he earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry under Wah Chiu and pursued postdoctoral work in applied math and high-performance computation under Ridgway Scott.

At UCLA, Dr. Zhou integrates structural biology, microbiology, and bioinformatics to reveal the architecture and dynamics of macromolecular machines involved in infectious diseases, cancer, and cellular processes — including herpesviruses, dsRNA viruses, telomerase, spliceosomes, and nanomachines.

His group pioneered high-resolution cryoEM methods for de novo backbone modeling (Nature 2008) and near-atomic models (Cell 2010; Science 2010), and developed advanced methods like cryoID (Nature Methods 2019) and IsoNet/spIsoNet (Nature Communications 2022) for cryoEM and cryoET of native biological systems. Recent work includes native structures of parasites, flagella, and AI-driven method developments.

With over 330 publications (>30 in Nature, Science, Cell), his research has garnered over 32,000 citations (h-index ≈88). Honors include Pew Scholar (1999), Burton Award, K.H. Kuo Award, and election as Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2024).

Dr. Cianfrocco has been a long-time member of the cryo-EM community over the past 20 years. His laboratory leverages its cryo-EM expertise, in combination with single-molecule imaging, to determine molecular mechanisms of microtubule-based transport. Beyond structural biology projects, the Cianfrocco lab also builds cyberinfrastructure for structural biology and develops approaches to automate cryo-EM instrument control.

Tim Grant is an investigator at the Morgridge Institute for Research and an assistant professor of biochemistry at UW-Madison. His research combines his love of biology, computing and technology — developing new cryo-EM methodologies and collaborating with others to use the technique to solve structures of important biological molecules. He is the primary developer of cisTEM, a software package used to process cryo-EM data. Recently, a core focus of his lab has been developing techniques that fuse native mass spectrometry with cryo-EM, and furthering 2D template matching techniques to uncover in-situ details from untitled cryo-EM images. It is impossible to develop methods without exposure to true biological problems, and since starting his group, his lab has been particularly focused on applying cryo-EM to nucleic acid biology, solving a number of structures involved in DNA replication restart and viral replication.

Prof. Wen Jiang earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Peking University, followed by a master’s degree in biophysics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then completed his Ph.D. in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) at Baylor College of Medicine, where he also pursued postdoctoral training in the same laboratory. He established his independent research group at Purdue University in 2005 as an assistant professor, later receiving tenure and rising to associate and then full professor. In 2025, his laboratory relocated to Penn State University, where he currently holds the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Structural Biology. Since his Ph.D. work, Dr. Jiang’s research has centered on developing new cryo-EM methods and exploring their applications. While his early investigations focused primarily on virus structures, his group in recent years has concentrated on determining the structures of protein amyloids extracted from post-mortem brain tissues of patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Down syndrome, and others.

Bin Liu, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Section Leader for Transcription and Gene Regulation at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. He leads a research program focused on the structural mechanisms of transcription and gene regulation, with particular emphasis on bacterial pathogens and emerging viruses.

Dr. Liu earned his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he conducted pioneering structural studies on serine protease catalysis. He then completed postdoctoral training in mechanistic crystallography at The Scripps Research Institute and later in the laboratory of Thomas A. Steitz at Yale University, where he elucidated key structures involved in DNA replication and transcription.

Since joining the Hormel Institute in 2018, Dr. Liu has made significant research breakthroughs in cryo-EM studies of RNA polymerase and transcription regulation. His research employs single-particle cryo-electron microscopy to capture macromolecular complexes at atomic resolution, advancing the understanding of transcription initiation, elongation, termination, and regulation, and informing the development of novel antibiotics and antiviral therapeutics.

Shyamal Mosalaganti was born and raised in India. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning before moving to Germany as an International Max Planck Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. There, in the laboratory of Stefan Raunser, he investigated the structure and function of membrane proteins. During his doctoral training, he also collaborated with Andrea Musacchio’s group to elucidate the architecture of key components of the human kinetochore.

Inspired by the transformative advances in cryo-electron microscopy, Mosalaganti pursued postdoctoral research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg in the laboratory of Martin Beck. His work contributed to mapping the symmetric core of the human nuclear pore complex and advanced the emerging field of in situ structural biology.

Now leading his laboratory at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute, Mosalaganti integrates cryo-electron microscopy and cellular biology to capture macromolecular complexes in their native cellular context, with a particular focus on lysosomal function, positioning, and inter-organelle communication.