About the Editors

 

Editor-in-Chief
 

Yinglong Miao, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Computational Medicine
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Yinglong Miao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Computational Medicine Program at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. His lab research is focused on the development of novel theoretical and computational methods and AI techniques, which greatly accelerate molecular simulations and facilitate simulation analysis, and the application of these methods, making unprecedented contributions to biomolecular modeling and drug discovery. In collaboration with leading experimental groups, his lab combines complementary simulations and experiments to uncover functional mechanisms and design drugs of important biomolecules, including G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), membrane-embedded proteases, RNA-binding proteins and RNA.
 

Associate Editors
 

Jianing Li, PhD

Professor, Borch Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
 

Prof. Li’s research focuses on the innovation of multiscale modeling approaches and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) for drug discovery, which allows accurate and efficient design of small molecules, biologics, and nanoparticles for potential therapeutics and drug delivery. She has discovered small molecules and peptides toward therapeutics to treat neurological diseases, infections and inflammation, and cancers. Prof. Li is a member of the Purdue Institute of Drug Discovery, Purdue Institute of Cancer Research, and Purdue Institute of Inflammation Immunology and Infectious Disease.

Xiangyu Liu, PhD
Associate Professor and principal investigator at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Tsinghua University, China



Prof. Xiangyu Liu is Associate Professor and principal investigator at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tsinghua University. His work led to elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which allosteric modulators regulate the function of the β2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR), provided guidance to the development of allosteric drugs for GPCRs, and proposed the model of the dynamic process of GPCR-G protein complex formation. His lab aims to elucidate structures of disease-related GPCRs and perform structure-based drug development.
 

Celine Valant, PhD

Associate Professor, Drug Discovery Biology 
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia


A major challenge in my field is to understand how drug-like molecules activate cell-surface receptors to produce biological responses, and how these responses lead to physiological and/or pathological conditions. In that context, my research has been instrumental in validating 3 novel modes of drug action at the largest family of receptor in the human genome and the target for >35% of all medicines, the G protein-coupled receptors. First, I have provided evidence for the therapeutical benefits of biased ligand, second, I have elucidated the mechanism of action of allosteric modulators, and third, I have discovered a new class of drug that I named bitopic ligands. Equipped with these 3 paradigms of drug action, my research vision is to address two major therapeutic areas:
1) Schizophrenia. My vision is to explore a combination therapy approach between an agonist and an allosteric modulator together, from in vitro to in vivo pre-clinical models, and ultimately develop bitopic ligands.
2) Pain. My vision is to assist the Australian government initiatives to limit dispensing opioids by developing safer therapeutics through the discovery, characterisation and validation of allosteric modulators of opioid receptors.

Advisory Editor

 

Engi Hassaan, PhD

Engi studied Pharmacy and Biotechnology at the German University in Cairo, where she obtained her master’s degree in Drug Design. She earned her PhD at Phillips University in Marburg, focusing on comparative analysis of fragment binding to protein using X-ray Crystallography, SPR, and NMR. During her PhD she also worked at the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, AstraZeneca Gothenburg, and ETH Zurich. Engi handles submissions in the areas of biochemistry, structural biology, machine learning techniques in computational biology, and biophysics. She joined Nature Communications in January 2022 and is based in the Berlin office.

Katarzyna Ciazynska, PhD, Springer Nature, UK

Kat Ciazynska began her studies at King’s College London, where she worked in James Mason’s lab, applying biophysical techniques to investigate interactions of antimicrobial peptides with biological membranes.  She carried out her doctoral work in the group of John Briggs at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, working on the structures of vesicular protein coats and viral glycoproteins using cryo-EM and cryo-ET. She joined Nature Structural & Molecular Biology in 2022. Kat is based in the London office.

 

 

Editorial Board Members
 

Alemayehu Abebe, PhD, University of Texas McGovern Medical School in Houston, Houston, TX, USA

Mahmoud Ahmed, PhD, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Amarillo, TX, USA

Karl-Heinz Altmann, PhD, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Jeffrey Aubé, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

David Bajusz, PhD, HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

Andreas Bender, PhD, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Gabriela Cristina Brailoiu, MD, Thomas Jefferson University, Jefferson College of Pharmacy, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Karim Budhwani, PhD, DLA, CerFlux | University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

Chia-en Chang, PhD, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

Yuan Chen, PhD, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

Xiaolin Cheng, PhD, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Ka Young Chung, PhD, School of Pharmacy Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea

Gerhard Ecker, PhD, University of Vienna, Austria

David E. Heppner, PhD, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Tingjun Hou, PhD, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Xuhui Huang, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Chang-Yu Hsieh, PhD, Zhejiang University, China

Irina Kufareva,PhD, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Jung-Hsin Lin, PhD, Biomedical Translation Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Susruta Majumdar, PhD, Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA

Lauren May, PhD, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Defang Ouyang, PhD, University of Macau, Macau

Thomas Stockner, PhD, Medical University of Vienna, Austria

Rakesh Tekade, PhD, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

David Thal, PhD, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Nagarajan Vaidehi, PhD, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA

Richard Walsh Jr., PhD, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Michael Wolfe, PhD, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

Junmei Wang, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Jingxin Wang, PhD, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Noelle Williams, PhD, Department of Biochemistry, UT Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX, USA
 

Weijun Xu, PhD, Experimental Drug Development Centre, A*STAR, Singapore

Libin Ye, Phd, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Qi Zhao, PhD, University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Anshan, China

Mingyue Zheng, PhD, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

Weiliang Zhu, PhD, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

Zhu Zhou,PhD, York College, City University Of New York, New York, NY, USA

 

Interested in joining the journal team?
 

If you are interested in joining the journal as an Editorial Board Member or Associate Editor, please complete this form. Associate Editors are part of the editorial team that handle manuscripts, while Editorial Board Members are regular reviewers and are consulted for ad hoc advice. We will contact you if your expertise meets the needs of the journal.

Nature Portfolio journals are committed to promoting practices that support diversity, equity and inclusion in science communication and publishing, and we strongly encourage gender, race, ethnic, geographic, career stage and other diversity in our journal teams. Our in-house staff will use your information only for the purposes of identifying new editorial team or board members. Please contact the journal by email if you would like to remove your information from these records.

Please note that we are not able to respond to all applicants.