Jon Lai is the Dan Danciger Professor of Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx NY. He was born and raised in Canada and received his B. Sc. (Hons.) in Biochemistry from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1999. He then obtained his Ph. D. in Biophysics in 2004, under the mentorship of Prof. Samuel Gellman at the University of Wisconsin - Madison where studied the structure and function of peptide oligomers. He was Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Biological Chemistry from 2004-2007, where he studied large enzymatic assemblies with Prof. Chris Walsh, and viral glycoprotein structure and function with Prof. Stephen Harrison. He began his independent lab at Einstein in 2007 as an Assistant Professor and rose through the ranks to full professor in 2018. His group has long-standing research interests in structure-based design of novel antibody therapeutics, isolation and characterization of antibodies, and vaccine design. He has published over 85 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He is recipient of a number of awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award, and the XSeed Award by Deerfield.

Bakar Hassan received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Northeastern University in Boston, MA. He went on to complete his graduate degree at Wesleyan University in the lab of Professor Erika Taylor, where we characterized bacterial glycosyltransferases to design novel antibiotics. Currently, he is completing his postdoc at the National Cancer Institute in the lab of Dr. Kylie Walters, optimizing small molecules targeting a proteasomal ubiquitin receptor for the development of cancer therapeutics for hematological malignancies. His research utilizes a combinatorial approach including computation, biophysics, and structural biology to identify novel small molecules for clinically relevant diseases.

Michelle Chen received her B.A. in Chemistry and Economics from Dartmouth College in 2015. She then moved on to Northwestern University and received her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2020. At Northwestern, she investigated the nature of the singlet fission multiexciton state in rylenediimides using time-resolved spectroscopic techniques. She subsequently was a postdoctoral associate at MIT where she utilized small molecule and polymer surfactants to create analytical assays for biosensing. She started her independent career at Wesleyan University in July 2024. At Wesleyan, her research focuses on light-matter interactions in organic materials.

Dr. Natalia Gonzalez-Pech is originally from Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from Monterrey Tech (ITESM).  In 2016, Natalia completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry, in Rice University. Her doctoral research focused on nanomaterials synthesis and characterization, and their applications in water processes. During her PhD, she was a Faculty for the Future Fellow. Dr. Gonzalez-Pech did her postdoctoral research at UCSD. Her research focused on the characterizing metal-containing nanoparticles formed in industrial processes and the understanding of their health effects. In 2019, she became an assistant professor at Hope College. Her research group, mainly formed by undergraduate and high school students, focused on the development of nanomaterials for water remediation and energy-related applications in a sustainable manner. In 2024, she moved to Wesleyan University to continue her work with nanomaterials but now adding graduate students to her work.

Michael Weir joined the Wesleyan Faculty in 1989 after post-doctoral research at UCSF with Tom Kornberg and Cynthia Kenyon, and graduate work at UPENN with Cecilia Lo. Weir’s current focus on computational biology started in the early 2000’s with the public announcement of the almost-complete sequencing of the human genome which led to discussions with computer science colleagues Michael Rice and Danny Krizanc to enrich our curriculum in computational bioinformatics; this evolved into research collaborations in the same field. In recent years, Weir’s group has also collaborated with Kelly Thayer to bring systems biology modes of analysis to probe molecular dynamics behaviors of the ribosome.