Date & Time: May 27, 2025 (Tuesday), 10:00 AM
Venue: Conference Room 302 East, Main Building, Main Campus
Speaker: Professor Wang Zhao
Title: Scaffold Decisions: Structural Mechanisms Coordinating Membrane Curvature and Neuronal Maturation
Moderator: Professor Song Yuanjian
Speaker Biography:
Professor Wang Zhao is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China. He received the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists in 2021 and was selected for the “Hundred Talents Program” under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) “Pioneer Initiative” in 2018. His primary research focuses on the maintenance of neuronal polarity and chemical intervention. By systematically studying the structure and functional regulation of key scaffold protein-mediated complexes in the nervous system, he aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the establishment and maintenance of neuronal polarity. Professor Wang earned his Bachelor’s degree from the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2014 under the supervision of Academician Zhang Mingjie. He established the Laboratory of Structural Chemical Biology in Neuroscience at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2016. In recent years, he has published multiple corresponding-author articles in prestigious journals, including Nature Chemical Biology (2018), Nature Metabolism (2021), Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2025), Nature Communications (2021, 2023, 2024), Science Advances (2022), and PNAS (2020, 2021). He has led research projects such as the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, major research initiatives, and three general projects, and has received funding from the National Key R&D Program of China and the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program.
