Tao Sun, PhD, Tianjin University, People's Republic of China
Dr. Tao Sun is an Associate Professor at the Center for Biosafety Research and Strategy at Tianjin University (link: Tianjin University Faculty Page). His research primarily focuses on the molecular biology and synthetic biology of photosynthetic cyanobacteria, such as Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942, and Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973. He has developed various genetic tools, including gene manipulation strategies, promoter libraries, inducible switches, and small RNA tools. Utilizing these tools, he has investigated the response mechanisms of model cyanobacteria to abiotic stresses such as heavy metal ions, high light, and solvents. Additionally, he has harnessed cyanobacteria as "light-driven cell factories" to produce a variety of chemicals, including inositol, 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP), and caryophyllene directly from CO2. More recently, he has pioneered the therapeutic application of engineered cyanobacteria in animal models for cancer treatment, wound healing, and heavy metal bioremediation.
Chin-Soon Phan, PhD, Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, Latvia
Chin-Soon Phan was PhD trained in marine natural products chemistry at Malaysia. He was then exposed to natural products biosynthesis as visiting fellow at the University of Western Australia (Yit-Heng Chooi), as JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the Hokkaido University (Tatsufumi Okino and Toshiyuki Wakimoto), and as postdoc fellow at the National University of Singapore (Brandon I. Morinaka). He started his independent research group at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis since Dec 2023.
Bin Lai, PhD, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, Germany
Dr. Bin Lai received his PhD from The University of Queensland, Australia in 2017, He then moved to UFZ, Germany for his postdoc research and started to lead his own research team in 2020. Since 2022.08, Dr. Lai his independent junior research group funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany. So far, he has secured about 6M euros third party funding as the principal investigator, and has published over 30 research papers. He has served on the editorial boards for a couple of journals including e.g. Microbial Biotechnology, New Biotechnology, etc. He was also elected as a member of the Scientific and Technical Council, UFZ in 2021 and the joint speaker of the IP HYPRO, UFZ in 2023. His research interests have been long-term focusing on systems electro-microbiology and electro-biotechnology for industrial biotechnology application purposes.
