Plenary Speakers
Jackie Y. Ying - Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Singapore. Title TBC.
Professor Jackie Y. Ying has been on the Chemical Engineering faculty at Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1992, and was promoted to Professor in 2001. She is the Executive Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Singapore. Prof. Ying is the Editor-in-Chief of Nano Today. She was named one of the 100 Engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and is a Fellow of the United States National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Prof. Ying’s research is interdisciplinary in nature, with a theme in the synthesis of advanced nanostructured materials for catalytic and biomaterial applications. Her laboratory has been responsible for several novel wet-chemical and physical vapor synthesis approaches that create nanocomposites, nanoporous materials and nanodevices with unique size-dependent characteristics. These new systems are designed for applications ranging from the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the efficient use of energy and resources, the control and prevention of environmental pollution, the targeted delivery of drugs, proteins and genes, to the generation of biomimetic implants and tissue scaffolds.
Zihe Rao - Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The atomic resolution structure of HSV Capsids.
Tsinghua University. Member of Presidium of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor of Tsinghua University / Nankai University, Former Preside
nt of Nankai University, Former Director-General of Institute of Biophysics, CAS. Zihe Rao is a Biophysicist and Structural Biologist, mainly engaged in the study of the three-dimensional structures of proteins and viruses related to human infection or those with important physiological functions, as well as in the development of innovative drug treatment. To date, Prof Rao has published 332 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals with over 10,000 citations. Prof. Rao got his Ph.D. from St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and Department of Biochemistry，University of Melbourne, Australia in 1989. From 2003, Prof. Rao was elected as a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of Hertford College, Univeristy of Oxford, a Member of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Honorary Doctor of University of Glasgow and Hong Kong Baptist University. From 2014-2017, Prof. Rao served as the President of International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB). From 2006-2017, he served as the Chairman of Biophysics Society of China.
EMBO Keynote Speaker: Professor Satyajit Mayor - Centre Director & Senior Professor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, GKVK, Bellary Road, Bangalore, India. Mechano-chemical control of membrane composition and tension in living cells.
Prof Mayor’s research focus is the cellular plasma membrane and understanding how the dynamic nature of the membrane allows eukaryotic c
ells to respond to their environment and meet the need for local organisation. This encompasses how underlying actin filaments control the local composition of membranes, how cells construct signalling complexes, sort membrane constituents and assemble the endocytic machinery in response to environmental signals. His laboratory strives to understand and explain the physico-chemical rules that control local organisation of the cell membrane, in the context of the cell and larger organism. To this end, his lab has developed novel microscopy tools to study the organisation of sub-cellular components over the nanometer-to-micron scale. They are able to probe the formation of specific membrane domains in living cells, explore the dynamics of membrane complexes in multiple cell systems and study the molecular mechanisms operating to drive endocytosis. This work is leading to an understanding of the fine structure of the plasma membrane, the creation of lipidic assemblies such as membrane rafts, the establishment of developmental gradients and the regulation of membrane tension. The program committee of the ABA Symposium is confident that Prof Mayors’ high quality research, innovation and theoretical and experimental studies on the basis for the formation of specific membrane domains, and the multiple biophysical techniques applied in these studies, will be of wide interest to the delegates at the 2018 Asian Biophysics Symposium. His work spans many of the symposium streams, including membrane biophysics, mechanobiology, medicine and biophysics, single molecule approaches and super-resolution microscopy.
Invited Speakers can be found in each of the streams below:
Nanobiophysics & Mechanobiology
