On March 16th, iHuman Institute successfully hosted the first “iHuman-SIAIS-SPST Joint Symposium.” This symposium, held in the auditorium of Y building and attracting 100 people to attend, was aimed at promoting the collaboration among the different schools, disciplines and research areas.
iHuman Institute Research Associate Professor Tao Houchao hosted the joint symposium. ShanghaiTech Provost and Vice President Yin Jie delivered the opening remarks, and introduced the distinguishing feature of ShanghaiTech University as having “no departments under the large schools,” which is meant to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion. SPST Associate Professor Liu Zhi, iHuman Institute Executive Director Professor Liu Zhijie, and SIAIS Executive Director Dr. Jiang Ge each introduced their schools and institutes.
A total of 16 professors presented their research works covering material science, chemistry, mass spectrometry, computation, imaging, editing, structural biology and chemical biology, etc. SPST Assistant Professor Zhong Chao developed a living functional materials platform based on engineered bacterial biofilms, combining materials science with synthetic biology. Principal Investigator Liu Jia, from the Shanghai institute for Immunochemical Studies, developed the CRISPR/Cas9 Surfaceome screen system for dissection of the interactions between macromolecules and host surface proteins, as well as the zinc finger protein-based drug delivery technologies. iHuman Institute Research Associate Professor Zhao Suwen gave a talk on computational biology study of adtivation mechanisms of GPCRs. The symposium was closed with a fruitful discussion led by Liu Zhi. Attendees suggested valuable steps to optimize the impact of the symposium and decided the next symposium will be hosted by the School of Physical Science and Technology.
