Dr Hongyi Xu

After completing a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) degree at the University of Queensland, Hongyi went on to pursue a PhD degree in materials engineering, specialized in electron microscopy and semiconductor nano-materials. The Australian Government sponsored his PhD study through the Australian Postgraduate Award program. He obtained his PhD degree at UQ in Dec 2013, and received the Dean’s accommodation for academic excellence as well as the best thesis of the year award from the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering. In Feb. 2014, Hongyi started his postdoc fellowship (Wenner-Gren Foundation postdoc award) in Prof. Xiaodong Zou’s group at Stockholm University. In 2015, he initiated the development of MicroED for studying biomolecules at Zou’s group. Hongyi became a principle investigator in 2018 to further develop and apply electron crystallography methods for studying structures of small molecules and macromolecules. He received a starting grant from the Swedish Research Council (Equivalent to ARC DECRA). Recently, Hongyi and colleagues solved the first new protein structure using MicroED. They also shown that it is possible to reveal protein inhibitor binding by MicroED. He is now working as a senior lecturer at ANU (Full time), and a researcher/principle investigator at Stockholm University (0.2 FTE).

My primary research interest is to develop electron crystallography methods for solving structures of materials, small organic molecules, peptides and macromolecules, from micron- and nano-sized crystals, and to answer important biological problems cannot be addressed with existing techniques. I have established collaborations with more than 25 research groups internationally. Some of my current research projects are:

•    Development of electron crystallography methods for crystal structure determination of inorganic materials, small organic molecules, peptides and macromolecules

•    Developing a multidimensional toolkit for modern electron microscopy

•    Studying charge state of metal ions in metalloenzyme by MicroED

•    Fragment-based drug design by high-throughput MicroED

•    Development of new electron crystallography methods including SerialED

•    New applications of cryo-EM (SPA, cryo-ET and MicroED)