Professor Xuechen Li received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2007. After postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and Professor in 2018. He currently serves as the Associate Dean (Research & Graduate Studies) of Faculty of Science. The central theme of Professor Li’s research focuses on the chemical biology of synthetic biomolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, and glycoconjugates) to study fundamental biological questions and develop potential therapeutic applications. 

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Dr. Sriram Neelamegham is a UB Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine at the State University of New York-Buffalo. His laboratory works at the interface of engineering and medicine, with applications in studies of human disease mechanics. Such work falls under the umbrella of "Systems Glycobiology," where high-throughput experimentation and mathematical modeling are coupled to describe the interplay between the competing glycoEnzymes that regulate cellular glycosylation patterns. Prof. Neelamegham has published over 140 research articles, book chapters, and patents. He receives the NIH Independent Scientist award, the 2015 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the 2018 Schoellkopf medal from the Western New York American Chemical Society. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering (AIMBE) and Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He has served on NIH advisory panels and editorial boards of various journals. He is currently the Discussion Leader developing the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) at the NCBI-glycans resource. Before moving to Buffalo. Prof. Neelamegham received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering/Bioengineering from the Rice University and completed his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine. 

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Dr. Hamed Jafar-Nejad received his M.D. from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and learned molecular biology techniques at a research institute in Iran. After one year at the University of Ottawa, he moved to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He received his postdoctoral training in Notch signaling and Drosophila neurogenesis with Dr. Hugo Bellen. In December 2006, he started his research group, first at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston and later at Baylor, where they continued their studies on the role of glycosylation and deglycosylation in animal development. In recent years, the Jafar-Nejad laboratory has devoted significant effort to understanding the function of human rare disease genes in animal development. These collaborative studies have led to the identification of Poglut1 as a dominant genetic suppressor of the liver phenotypes in a mouse model for Alagille syndrome, the identification of a new form of muscular dystrophy caused by recessive mutations in POGLUT1, and the discovery of several pathways downstream of the deglycosylation enzyme N-glycanase 1 (NGLY1), mutations in which cause a multi-system developmental disorder. This work will likely provide novel insight into how glycans regulate animal development and might help establish new therapeutic approaches for these diseases.

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Dr. Mary Jackson is currently a Professor of Bacteriology in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University. She earned a Bioengineering degree and an MSc. Degree from the National School of Agronomy, Rennes, France, in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France, in 1998. 
Her research focuses on the elucidation of critical pathways leading to the biosynthesis and export of (glyco)lipids, fatty acids, and polysaccharides in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other mycobacterial pathogens of clinical interest to inform novel therapeutic strategies. 
Dr. Jackson has published over 185 peer-reviewed scientific articles and serves on numerous grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other Federal, private, and non-profit funding agencies globally. 
 

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Dr. Drickamer began working in the field of glycan-binding receptors as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University. These receptors have been the focus of his subsequent research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Oxford University, and currently at Imperial College London. His work on identifying a common carbohydrate recognition led to the definition of C-type lectins as one of the major groups of glycan-binding receptors. His ongoing research is a joint project with Dr. Maureen Taylor. The aim is to develop a broad understanding of the biological roles of sugar recognition. They have used a combination of biochemical, biophysical, and molecular biological approaches to understand how carbohydrate-recognition domains provide selective recognition of glycoproteins and cell surfaces. In addition, they seek to determine how such recognition leads to the targeting of biological functions, such as innate immunity to pathogens, clearance of serum glycoproteins, cell adhesion, and cell signaling, and how genetic variation in sugar-binding receptors causes changes in their molecular properties and hence contributes to human disease. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Drickamer co-authored the textbook Introduction to Glycobiology, designed to introduce the field to students and researchers from other disciplines.

 

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Dr. Adnan Halim is a biochemist specializing in mass spectrometry-based glycoproteomics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Gothenburg University, Sweden, in 2012, where he developed methods based on hydrazide chemistry to enrich N- and O-linked glycopeptides from human tissues. This approach led him to discover O-GalNAc linkage to tyrosine residues on amyloid-beta peptides from human cerebrospinal fluid. In 2012, Adnan was recruited to Copenhagen Center for Glycomics (CCG), where he pursued his postdoctoral training and interest in mass spectrometry, protein glycosylations, and precise genome editing. At CCG, Adnan focused on the elusive O-linked mannose modification in eukaryotes. He made major breakthroughs in this field by discovering cadherin/plexin O-mannosylations and the TMTC1-4 glycosyltransferases (GT105). Adnan was promoted to associate professor/group leader at CCG in 2016. Using a combination of techniques, including CRISPR/Cas9 engineering in cell lines and advanced mass spectrometry, his team is currently exploring the functions and regulations of non-classical O-Man glycosylations in mammalian systems.

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Dr. Xing Chen is currently a Changjiang Distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University. He completed his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2002 from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2007 from University of California, Berkeley, under Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi and Prof. Alex Zettl. He then joined the laboratory of Prof. Timothy Springer at Harvard Medical School as an LSRF postdoctoral fellow, where his research focused on structural immunology. Dr. Chen started as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Peking University in 2010 and was promoted directly to Full Professor with tenure in 2016. He is also affiliated with Center for Life Science (CLS) and Synthetic and Functional Biomolecule Center (SFBC) of Peking University. Some of his recent awards include ACS Horace S. Isbell Award (2021), Xplore Prize (2010), Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award (2020), Okeanos-CAPA Senior Investigator Award at the Chemical and Biology Interface (2019), CCS-RSC Young Chemist Award (2018), ACS David Y. Gin New Investigator Award (2016), IGO Young Glycoscientist Award (2015), and National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014). His current research interest focuses on chemical glycobiology.

 

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Professor Ludger Johannes is Research Director (DRE) at INSERM. He is a member of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German organization of the academically gifted), Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and German Academy of Science — Leopoldina. At Institut Curie, he has been heading since 2001 the Traffic, Signaling, and Delivery Team, member of the excellence initiative Cell(n)Scale. Since January 2014, he has directed the Cellular and Chemical Biology unit. His research aims at establishing fundamental concepts of endocytosis and intracellular trafficking. The Johannes team has discovered the membrane trafficking interface between early endosomes and the Golgi apparatus, and demonstrated that lectin-induced glycolipid reorganization acts as a driving force in clathrin-independent endocytosis (termed the GlycoLipid-Lectin / GL-Lect hypothesis). The studies of the Johannes team have been published in highly visible international journals, including Cell and Nature. Between 2014-2020, he was the holder of an ERC advanced grant. He also aims at exploiting the discoveries of his team for the development of innovative cancer therapy strategies using the B-subunit of Shiga toxin (STxB) as a "pilot" for the delivery of therapeutic compounds to precise intracellular locations of dendritic cells for immunotherapy, and to tumors for targeted therapy.

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Professor Wong received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. (1982) in Chemistry from MIT. He then worked at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow, became an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in 1983, and became a professor in 1987. He was Professor and Ernest W. Hahn Chair in Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute (1989–2006), Director of Genomics Research Center (2003–2006), and President of Academia Sinica (2006-2016). He is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute with a joint appointment at Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica.  
Professor Wong receives numerous awards, including the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the ACS Claude Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, and the Cope Medal, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry. He is a member of Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
His research interests are in the field of chemical biology and synthetic chemistry, including the synthesis of complex carbohydrates and glycoproteins associated with disease progression. He is the author of over 700 publications (H-index 144) and 100 patents.

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Dr. Linda Hsieh-Wilson is a Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She was born in New York City and obtained her B.S. degree magna cum laude in chemistry from Yale University in 1990. In 1996, she received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Peter Schultz. In 1996, she moved to Rockefeller University to study neurobiology with Professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow. Hsieh-Wilson joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology in 2000, where she became an associate professor of chemistry in 2006 and a full professor in 2010. She was an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2005-2014, and in 2015, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Hsieh-Wilson has pioneered the application of organic chemistry to understand the roles of carbohydrates and protein glycosylation in neurobiology. Her honors include a Beckman Young Investigator Award (2000), Research Corporation Research Innovation Award (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2003), Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (2006), Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2008), Gill Young Investigator Award in Neuroscience (2009), and Horace S. Isbell Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (2014).

 

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Professor Wong received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. (1982) in Chemistry from MIT. He then worked at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow, became an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in 1983, and became a professor in 1987. He was Professor and Ernest W. Hahn Chair in Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute (1989–2006), Director of Genomics Research Center (2003–2006), and President of Academia Sinica (2006-2016). He is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute with a joint appointment at Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica.  
Professor Wong receives numerous awards, including the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the ACS Claude Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, and the Cope Medal, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry. He is a member of Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
His research interests are in the field of chemical biology and synthetic chemistry, including the synthesis of complex carbohydrates and glycoproteins associated with disease progression. He is the author of over 700 publications (H-index 144) and 100 patents.

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Professor Manfred Wuhrer studied Biochemistry at Regensburg University and obtained his Ph.D. in 1999 at Giessen University, Germany. Subsequently, he joined the Leiden University Medical Center, where he was appointed assistant professor in 2005 and associate professor in 2008. In 2013, he was appointed full professor of Analytics for Biomolecular Interactions at VU University Amsterdam. In 2015 he continued his career as Head of the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at LUMC, Leiden. He focuses on the development of mass spectrometric methods for glycomics and glycoproteomics and their application in clinical research and biotechnology. Clinical applications cover the fields of rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, longevity, as well as various infectious diseases. 

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Dr. Ryan Weiss began his diverse scientific training by earning his B.S. in Chemistry in 2008 at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA, USA. He then received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2015 at the University of California, San Diego, under the supervision of Prof. Yitzhak Tor, where he studied the design, synthesis, and application of small molecule antagonists of heparin- and heparan sulfate-protein interactions. As an NIH K12 postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Jeffrey Esko’s group at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, his research focused on utilizing whole-genome screening methods to investigate the regulation of heparan sulfate biosynthesis. Dr. Weiss began his independent career as an assistant professor at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia in January 2021. Research in the Weiss Laboratory focuses on studying the structure, function, and regulation of complex carbohydrates in human biology and disease. In addition, his lab is dedicated to developing pharmacological and cell-based tools to aid in the discovery of novel targets and approaches for modulating glycan assembly in relevant human disorders.

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