On March 5th, the senior scientist of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Prof. Thomas Earnest was invited to visit SINANO.

Prof. Earnest first had a communication with researchers from Division of Nanobiomedicine about their research programs. In the afternoon, he then gave a talk titled "Structural Systems Biology and Advanced X-ray Sources”, which hosted by Prof. CHEN Liwei, Vice-director of SINANO. In the presentation, Prof. Earnest introduced the rate of data collection from these facilities – both synchrotrons and X-FELs – have challenged existing approaches to the collection, processing, analysis, and archiving of large biomolecular assemblies structural data. Also of great importance is the necessity to integrate a wide range of information on cloning, expression, purification, biochemistry, and function with the structural data across different length and time scales, as well as with other structural methods (SAXS, optical microscopy, EM, etc.) to give a broad understanding of these complex biological systems.

Prof. Earnest is currently on Chinese Academy of Sciences Visiting Professorship for Senior International Investigators at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility of Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics to develop high-throughput protein crystallography beamlines, coherent X-ray imaging of cells, structural biology of large biomolecular assemblies with methods from synthetic biology, and scientific case for X-ray free electron lasers for structural systems of biology.

Prof. Thomas Earnes was the senior scientist and group leader of Structural Proteomics Development Group in Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA. He earned his Ph.D. degree of Physics in Boston University in 1987, and he had the postdoctoral training from 1987 to 1990 in Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry of University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco. In recognition of his work, Prof. Thomas Earnes has received many awards and honors including David Shirley Award in 2001 for Outstanding Scientific Research at Advanced Light Source, LBNL Outstanding Performance Award in 2000, Newcomb Cleveland Award in 2011 for Outstanding Accomplishment in Science.

Prof. Thomas Earnest @ Presentation Photo by ZENG Guangqiang

Attendants @ Suzhou Nanomedicine Top Talk Photo by ZENG Guangqiang