Dr. Lukai Zhai earned his B.S. in biotechnology from Shandong Normal University and his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Michigan Technological University. His graduate work focused on developing next-generation thermostable HPV L2 vaccines to protect against both oral and genital infections with diverse HPV types using the bacteriophage MS2 virus-like particle (VLP) platform. He has extensive technical lab skills, including DNA cloning, Western blot, ELISA, immunoprecipitation (IP) and co-IP, ChIP-PCR, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), gold nanoparticle staining, cell culture and transfection, and HPV pseudovirus production and purification. In 2019, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Connie Krawczyk at Van Andel Institute as a postdoctoral fellow.