Profiles

Honored Guests

Dr. James C. Liao, President, Academia Sinica

Professor Liao received his B.S. (1980) degree from National Taiwan University and Ph.D. (1987) from University of Wisconsin-Madison. After working as a research scientist at Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY, he started his academic career at Texas A&M University in 1990 and moved to University of California, Los Angeles from 1997 to 2016. He has served as President of Academia Sinica in Taiwan since June 2016.

Professor Liao is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Academician of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He also received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2010), the White House “Champion of Change” for innovations in renewable energy (2012), the ENI Renewable Energy Prize bestowed by the President of Italy in 2013, and the 2014 National Academy of Sciences Award for the Industrial Application of Science.

His research has focused on metabolism, including its biochemistry, regulation and redesign. He uses metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and systems biology to construct microorganisms to produce next generation biofuels and to study the obesity problem in human. Dr. Liao and his team also develop mathematical tools for investigating metabolism and guiding engineering design. Currently, their main projects include engineering proteins and biochemical pathways for CO2 fixation and production of fuels and chemicals. The ultimate goal is to use biochemical methods to replace petroleum processing and to treat metabolic diseases.

Dr. Gary S. May, Chancellor, University of California, Davis

Dr. Gary May became UC Davis’ seventh chancellor on Aug. 1, 2017 by appointment of the UC Board of Regents. He leads the most comprehensive campus in the University of California system, with four colleges and six professional schools that offer 104 undergraduate majors and 96 graduate and professional degrees. UC Davis enrolls about 37,000 students, brings in nearly $800 million annually in sponsored research and contributes at least $8 billion to the California economy each year.

An accomplished scholar and engineer, May came to UC Davis from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he had been for nearly three decades, most recently as dean of the institute’s College of Engineering — the largest and most diverse school of its kind in the nation, with 450 faculty and 13,000 students. Prior to being dean, May was the Steve W. Chaddick Chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and previous to that, he was the executive assistant to Georgia Tech President G. Wayne Clough.

May is known as a dynamic leader with a passion for helping others succeed. He believes success is best judged by “the extent you enhance the lives of others.” Throughout his career, he has championed diversity in both higher education and the workplace. He developed and led programs to attract, mentor and retain underrepresented women and ethnic minorities in STEM — the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In 2015, President Obama honored him with the Presidential Award for Excellence in STEM Mentoring.

May has won numerous research awards for his work in computer-aided manufacturing of integrated circuits and other devices. He has authored more than 200 technical publications, contributed to 15 books and holds a patent in this topic.

In 2010, he was named “outstanding engineering alumnus” of UC Berkeley, where he earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr. Hsing-Jien Kung, Distinguished Investigator, Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine National Health Research Institutes

Dr. Hsing-Jien Kung is Distinguished Investigator of National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), Taiwan. He was Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine, U. C. Davis, Medical School, and served as Director of Basic Research, U. C. Davis Cancer Center prior to his joining NHRI in 2013. Dr. Kung’s lab has a long standing interest in tyrosine kinases, histone demethylases and androgen receptor regulation. His lab was credited for the original discovery of erbB/EGFR as a target gene for retroviral insertion, establishing this locus as a protooncogene and demonstrating the oncogenecity of v-src DNA. In the area of prostate cancer, his lab was the first to establish: a tyrosine kinase profile, IL-6 induced neuroendocrine differentiation and the involvement of Src/Etk/FAK trio-kinase complex in androgen-independent growth. More recently, his lab contributed to the identification of the origin of the newest human retrovirus, XMRV and dispelled its direct relationship to prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome. His current research specifically focuses on metabolism and epigenetics of prostate cancer and Kaposi's sarcoma. Recent publications include the identifications of novel autophagic pathways in starve cancer cells and long non-coding RNAs involved in tumor metabolisms. Dr. Kung was the founding Director of Basic Sciences for two US NCI designated Cancer Centers (Case Western Reserve University and UC Davis) and for Molecular and Genome Medicine, NHRI, Taiwan. Since his return to Taiwan, he has catalyzed the interactions of NHRI with several institutes in US including NIEHS (of NIH), UC Davis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne etc. He also served as External Advisors for Centers/Programs of prominent institutes in US and in Taiwan including Harvard University, UCLA, UC Irvine, Oregon Health and Science Institute, Uniformed Service University of Health Science, Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University, National Tsing-Hua University, and National Yang-Ming University.

Symposium Chairs

DR. FU-TONG LIU is Vice President of Academia Sinica and Distinguished Research Fellow at Institute of Biomedical Sciences. He received his BS degree in Chemistry from National Taiwan University, PhD degree in Chemistry from University of Chicago, and MD degree from University of Miami. He served as Head of the Allergy Research Section at the Scripps Research Institute, Head of the Division of Allergy at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, and Distinguished Professor and Chair at Department of Dermatology, University of California-Davis. He is a pioneer and leading investigator in the studies of a family of animal lectins, galectins, and his research is focused on the roles of these proteins in inflammation and immunity, as well as cancer progression and adiposity. His papers have been cited over 26,000 times and his h-index is 88 (Google Scholar). He is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and an Academician of Academia Sinica. He was First Laureate of the 2015 Khwarizmi International Award.

DR. MARK WINEY, Dean and Distinguished Professor, became dean of the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis on August 1, 2016. He came to UC Davis following 25 years of teaching, research and leadership at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a distinguished biologist, an experienced administrator and a strong advocate of biology education at every level.

Dean Winey is a graduate of Syracuse University with a B.S. in Biology with honors and earned a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Following graduate school, he served as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Genetics at the University of Washington. He then joined the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1991, where he went on to attain tenure. From 2012 to 2016, Mark served as the chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, before accepting the role of dean at UC Davis.

Dean Winey's research includes studying the genetics and molecular biology of microtubule organizing centers (MTOCs), which include the cellular structures called centrosomes that are critical for organizing the spindles needed to ensure accurate movement of chromosomes during cell division. Centrosome defects can result in genomic instability that may contribute to the development of cancer as well as to chromosome mis-segregation that can lead to miscarriages. Mark's academic honors include the distinction of having been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Pew Scholar, and he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014.

DR. WOLF-DIETRICH HEYER is Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Davis. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bern training with Professors Urs Leupold and Jürg Kohli, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School with Professor Richard Kolodner. His longstanding research interest is the mechanism and regulation of homologous recombination and translating these insights into the cancer clinic. He directs the T32 Training Grant in Oncogenic Signals and Chromosome Biology and serves in the University of California, Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center as Co-leader of the Molecular Oncology Program.

Presenters

Listed in the order of Program Presentation

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