- Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award in 2023 at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
About Lan Wang’s work
Dr Lan Wang is a biologist who is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that determine the health of the mitochondria, an organelle whose dysfunction underlies many human diseases. She is also interested in discovering new mechanisms that regulate protein translation and how pathogens could take advantage of these mechanisms to manipulate the host cell for their own advantage.
Dr Wang’s current research specifically addresses the quality control pathways that regulate protein homeostasis on the mitochondria's membranes and the maintenance of the mitochondrial genome.
Dr Wang will use structural biology techniques such as cryo-EM and cell biology approaches including proteomics and light microscopy to answer her research questions. The findings from this research could lead to the development of mechanism-based therapeutics for mitochondria-related diseases.
Biography
Dr Lan Wang is currently Assistant Professor, School of Life Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She graduated with a BSc in chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2011 and then completed her PhD in chemistry in 2016 at Harvard. From 2016-2022, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. Among the many awards she has received are the following: the Award for Postdoctoral Independent Research, Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research, University of California, San Francisco; best talk given by a postdoc at the Gordon Research Conference on Molecular Membrane Biology; a Berkelhammer Postdoc Travel Award, University of California, San Francisco and a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation fellowship (2017-2021). Dr Wang’s current research is supported by a Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award.