The lab gathered for a dinner by the Gulf beach, enjoying a beautiful sunset.

Dr. Zhao gave a seminar in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology (IBP), UT Health. Thanks for the kind invitaion and engaging discussions!

The lab attended the 35th Keck Annual Conference, held at Rice University. This year’s anniversary honored Dr. Pettitt and Dr. Kathy Matthews for their outstanding contributions to establishing the Keck Center, a training partnership connecting TMC universities across the Houston–Galveston area. It was inspiring to learn that, since its founding in 1990, the Keck Center has maintained a strong focus on computational research. Thank you, Monte and Kathy, for your lasting impact!

The lab attended the GSBS Research Expo with three poster presentations respectively by Zhiyuan, Ziyu and Rui. Notably, this marked Rui’s first poster presentation — congratulations and well done!

Elim (2025-) decided to do the first rotation in the lab. She began shadowing and auditing before her official start in Oct. Welcome, Elim!

The lab is looking for 1-2 motivated PhD students. Please click our Research and Team page to find out more. If you are interested, please email hazhao@UTMB.EDU with your CV, motivation and/or any thoughts. A few local fellowships including NLM training program are available.

Toward the end of August, Gary wrapped up his time at UTMB and headed west to begin his studies at UC Berkeley. The lab took a campus tour together and shared a few light-hearted moments. Vincent and Hao left a few days later. Jack also finished his rotation with impressive learnings on a space-medicine driven project. Cheers for their new chapter 🍻🍻. We wish all of them the very best in the Fall 2025!

In early August, we attended the International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2025) held at Ohio State University. Dr. Zhao gave an invited talk on predicting PPIs. Zhiyuan and Ziyu each presented a poster on their projects. Our works were well received! 🔥🔥

In July, we received the UT STAR Award (Rising STAR). We are grateful to the University of Texas System and UTMB for their trust and support!

In July, Rui Tang arrived in Galveston to begin his research internship with us. Jack (Plewa) Tiller started a rotation project focusing on aerospace omics, and Gary Sun, a talented undergraduate, joined us as an intern.

Earlier in June, Raymond Wang started an internship with us (remotely for now). Interestingly, Raymond and Gary are from the same school and same major (EE/CS, Berkeley) but they haven’t known each other. The world is small!

Welcome, Raymond, Jack, Rui and Gary!

In the end of May, our lab presented two posters at the UTMB Research Day. Both posters were popular!🔥🔥 Well done, Lauren and Ziyu!

In mid-May, Hao Wang arrived in Galveston to work with us in person for the summer and Vincent Thai joined us as a summer intern. Welcome, Hao and Vincent!

In Apr 2025, Dr. Barry Honig, pionner in protein eletrastatics, molecular biophysics and computational biology, visited UTMB. He met with our trainees at SCSB, engaged with lab members, and delivered a departmental seminar on neuronal self-recognition and clustered protocadherin protein. This work was later published in Nature.

In Mar 2025, Lauren Gansereit started doing rotation in our lab. Welcome, Lauren!

Our first collabration paper at UTMB was published. Dr. Zhao helped Dr. Sheng Zhang’s group at UT Health with the free energy calculation for the huntingtin HTT and Hap40 proteins. Through the hybrid structural and functional studies of the fly and human HTT-HAP40 complexes, this work demonstrated that structural similarity underlies the functional conservation of the two complexes in these evolutionarily distant species.

In Jan 2025, Dr. Zhiyuan Song joined us as a postdoc researcher. Maria Clara joined us as a rotation student. Ziyu Shi started working with us as a visiting student (remotely). Welcome, Zhiyuan, Maria and Ziyu!

The lab celebrated our first semester at UTMB and the Christmas holiday! Cheers and Merry Christmas!🥂🎅🎁

In Dec 2024, Dr. Zhao was invited by SCBA-TX to give a talk at Baylor College of Medicine. The collabrative atmosphere among the TMC institutes is fantastic!

In Oct 2024, Tate May joined us for a rotation project. Dr. Surendra Neggi joined us as a senior research scientist. Welcome, Tate and Surendra!

A local fellowship (NLM training program) is available for student and postdoc trainees. Please carefully read the program website and contact Dr. Zhao asap if you are interested. Application is due on Oct. 18, 2024. Mentors will draft up the application.

We currently have 1-2 postdoc, 1 technician, and 2 PhD student position openings. Click our Team page to find out more for each position. When you are ready, please email Dr. Zhao (hazhao@utmb.edu) with your CV, motivation and/or any thoughts if you are interested in joining us!

We launched our group website. Welcome to check it out and please let us know if you find any errors!

This website is built with Jekyll, which takes Markdown file and generates HTML styled with CSS. We used a template originally written by Dr. Trevor Bedford. We thank Dr. Guang Shi for helpful discussions on static HTML generators. The source code is uploaded on GitHub.

This website is maintained by the lab. We also have another group webpage maintained by SCSB scientific computing team.

Crossing the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, we arrived in Texas! Looking forward to a new start.
Dr. Zhao’s office will be at 5.222, Research Building 6 (820 Market St, Galveston, TX). Our lab space will be at 5.416, Research Building 6, shared with Dr. Monte Pettitt’s computational research group.