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Sui Laboratory Personnel

Haixin Sui, Ph.D., Principal Investigator

Haixin sui, Ph.D.

Dr. Haixin Sui received his undergraduate training in Engineering. He conducted his postgraduate research in electron microscopy (EM) of nanocrystals and quasicrystals under Prof. Kehsin Kuo, who founded and was then directing the internationally renowned Beijing Laboratory of Electron Microscopy (BLEM), Chinese Academy of Sciences. After obtaining his Ph.D, Haixin switched to structural biology and worked as a postdoc in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he purified and crystallized the aquaporin-1 water channel and determined its structure by x-ray crystallography in 2001. Right after the success in membrane proteins, he decided to switch back to cryo-EM and joined Dr. Ken Downing’s group at the Berkeley Lab where he studied bacteria and rhabdoviruses as well as motile-cilium microtubule doublets using cryo-electron tomography and a self-developed algorithm of sub-tomogram averaging. In 2008 Haixin moved from Albany, CA to Albany, NY to start this own lab at Wadsworth Center. Like many biophysicists, Haixin is interested in utilizing cutting-edge structural imaging methods to tackle a broad range of difficult biomedical problems that are disease relevant. 

Matthew Phanchana, Ph.D.

Matthew Phanchana, Ph.D.

Dr. Matthew Phanchana is a visiting scientist from Mahidol University in Thailand. His primary research interest is drug target identification, mechanism of action and resistance. During his PhD training in Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK, he used a chemical biology approach to identify molecular targets of antimalarial artemisinin. At Mahidol University, he led a research group working on drug discovery and mechanistic study in the anaerobic pathogen Clostridioides difficile. He utilizes various techniques, including biochemical, biophysical, computational, and omics. He believes structural biology is the pinnacle of molecular understanding of drug action and resistance as it shows the most detailed view of the interaction, which led him to join the Sui Laboratory in March 2023. 

Adam Koplas

Adam Koplas

Adam Koplas is currently working as a Research Technician doing Cryo-EM in the Sui Laboratory. He received a bachelor’s degree in Nanoscale Science from SUNY Polytechnic CNSE, where he worked with Dr Yubing Xie and Susan Sharfstein on fabrication of biomimetic Extracellular Matrix (ECM) substitutes for stem cell tissue reconstruction. He is actively involved in the structural imaging projects in the lab. 

Biqing Liang

Biqing Liang

Biqing is a first-year PhD student in the department of Biomedical Science at UAlbany. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Biological Neuroscience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She has been passionate about cellular and structural biology since working at Wadsworth Center as an undergraduate. Her current research focuses on elucidating the mechanism of maintaining primary cilium structure and functions through molecular cloning and cryo-electron microscope. 

Hazel Dellario

Hazel Dellario

Hazel is an undergraduate student studying neuroscience and psychology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute while doing part time research at the Wadsworth Center. She primarily works on protein expression and purification. She is currently working on characterizing the structure of proteins of interest in the coronaviruses and tuberculosis. In the future, she hopes to study the genetic and molecular mechanisms that drive neurological diseases. 

Group picture on Aug 12, 2022

Sui Laboratory Picture

 

Former Lab Members

  • Shufeng Sun, Visiting scientist/Ph.D. student (Jan 2014 – Dec 2022). Current: Postdoc in NIH
  • Saiyang Hu, Senior Lab Technician (Oct, 2021 – Aug 2022). Current: Lab scientist in Boston. 
  • Jennifer Pangburn, MPH summer intern (June – Aug 2022), Current: MPH Student in SPH UAlbany
  • Andrea Aguanno, UAlbany Summer undergraduate volunteer (June – Aug 2022). Current: UAlbany undergraduate.
  • Hangyeol Park, Undergraduate Volunteer from Computer Sci Dept at UAlbany (Feb - May 2022), Currently working in Amazon.com, Inc in Seattle, WA
  • Ke Chen, Lab technician/scientist (Sept 2016 – Oct 2020). Currently a Research Scientist and a PhD candidate in University of Arizona 
  • Xiaohong Qin, Visiting scientist (Aug 2019 – Oct 2020). Current: Associate Professor, Tianjin University, China.
  • Boonthaworn Kanpong, Mahidol University Fulbright visiting student (Jan – June 2020) Current: junior faculty in Mahidol University, Thailand
  • Rebecca Fisher, Senior Lab Technician (Sept 2009 – March 2020) Current: Senior Lab Technician, Viral antibody testing lab, Wadsworth Center 
  • Jie He, Postdoc (Sept 2012 - Sept 2016), Current: TEM specialist in an EM service company in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
  • Yanxia Jia, Visiting scientist (Aug 2019 – Feb 2020). Current: Assistant Director, Center for Biological Imaging, Biophysics Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Benitha Muyjzere, UAlbany Summer intern (June – Aug 2018), Current: UAlbany graduated.
  • Yongping Wu, Visiting Scientist (Feb 2016 – Jan 2017) Current: Associate Professor, Zhejiang A&F University, China
  • Thomas Stephens, NSF REU summer program (modified) from Union college (June – Aug 2017), Worked as a lab technician at Cornell Medical School at NYC Current: MBA Candidate at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business
  • Matthew Reynolds, NSF REU summer program and summer intern from University of Scranton (June 2015 – May 2017), Current: PhD candidate at Rockefeller University
  • Tanaporn Phetruen, Visiting student from Mahidol University (Sept – Dec 2015), Current: PhD graduated from Mahidol University
  • Mark Velasquez, Volunteer from UAlbany (Aug 2012 – July 2013), Graduated from Master program at NYU Polytechnic Institute. Current: Lab technician at Cal State Univ. San Francisco
  • Jared Spaulding, NSF REU summer program from UAlbany (June - Aug 2012), PhD in physics at UAlbany
  • Caira Cartwright, NSF REU summer program from St. Mary's College (June - Aug 2012), Currently the operations supervisor in the Maryland Department of Human Services
  • James Kennedy, NY State Undergraduate “Public Health Works!” summer program from Clarkson University (June – Aug 2010), Ph.D. in biochemistry from McGill University. Current: Director of Digital Products at O2X Human Performance.
  • Samshad Sial, Volunteer from UAlbany (Oct 2009 – March 2010), Currently a Physician's Assistant in the Albany area.