Latest news
We encourage prospective PhD and postdoctoral candidates with an outstanding academic/research track record to read the following guidelines and contact Yu Heng to find out about available funding opportunities.Oct 26, 2024 - Our Sydney iGEM team, the REBolutionaries, won big at the Grand Jamboree in Paris this year! Gold Medal and Top 3 in the undergraduate category, Best Therapeutics project, and nominations for Best Wiki, Best Presentation, Best Composite Part, and Best Entrepreneurship. WOW!!! You can check out their Wiki here.
Oct 10, 2024 - We were awarded a Ramaciotti Health Investment Grant to support our ongoing efforts in cancer drug discovery.
Aug 5, 2024 - Welcome to Leandra Impelmann who is joining us as a DAAD visiting exchange student!
Jul 1, 2024 - Two pieces of news.. we say farewell to Lovisa Blix, our visting Masters volunteer from Sweden. And we celebrate that Haritha's bicycles using 1,2,3-tris(bromomethyl)benzene have rolled out for publication in OBC!
May 9, 2024 - Taylor's tetrahedral shape-shifting encapsulin work has now been published in PNAS!
Apr 26, 2024 - Lisa's super reliable FP assay for our favourite ALT+ cancer target FANCM-RMI is now online at Methods in Enzymology, with help from Haritha and Regi.
Feb 14, 2024 - A couple of exciting new pre-prints out from the lab, one on a new 1,2,3-bicyclisation linker for peptides with some nice 2D NMR, and another on a crazy example of morphing a protein cage from icosahedral to tetrahedral... congrats all!
Jan 9, 2024 - A new year brings some new additions to the lab - Lior Yoffe as a Denison summer scholar, Alex Loustau as an Honours student, and Rezwan Siddiquee as a highly experienced RA. Welcome all!
Also, Titus and Regi's work on NONO inhibition is out in J. Pept. Sci.
Dec 21, 2023 - The year ends with a few more big achievements to celebrate - Lachlan taking home the Thompson Prize for his talk hosted by the Sydney Protein group, Eric/Felicia/Taylor sweeping the prizes at the ARC Centre of Excellence in SynBio 2023 Conference, and Jackie/Josh for finishing up an outstanding research year with first class Honours. More big things to come in 2024!
Oct 20, 2023 - Our Honours student Jackie won a poster prize at the International Peptide Symposium in Brisbane this week, congrats!
Jul 31, 2023 - Another two manuscripts! Sumyee's PIP-199 story is published in J. Med. Chem. while Yu Heng's account on protein cages is in Aust. J. Chem.
Jun 17, 2023 - Congrats to PhD student Felicia on her first first-author article on polymorphism of protein cages and VLPs. Read it at J. Mater. Chem. B.
May 26, 2023 - We say farewell to Dr Reginald Young, one of the OG founding members of the lab, who's successfully completed his PhD and is moving onto a post at CSIRO in Canberra. Thanks for all your contributions over the years!
Apr 17, 2023 - Our pre-print on a purported "selective inhibitor" PIP-199 is now up on ChemRxiv. Well done to Sumyee and the team for some excellent detective work!
Feb 26, 2023 - Yu Heng gave a science outreach talk on the power of blue sky research for Science at the Local at the Springwood Sports Club. A fantastic community science initiative now in its 10th year of running!
Feb 2, 2023 - Lisa landed a big Tour de Cure grant as the lead investigator! Go Dr Alcock!
Dec 9, 2022 - In a whirlwind end to the year, Lachlan and the team hosted the 2nd Bio-engineering and Nanoscience Symposium (BEANS 2022) - nice one!
Add to that Yu Heng's presentations at CIPPS 2022, CoESB 2022, OMC2022 (ACES ECR award presentation), Eric's presentation at ASB2022, Lachlan's talk for the Le Fevre Lectures, it's been busy...
Oct 1, 2022 - Congrats Eva on completing your MPhil - she is continuing on for a PhD, so look forward to seeing more stellar research from her over the coming years.
Sep 28-30, 2022 - Haritha and Lisa were out at the ARC Fragment Based Drug Discovery Down Under meeting, while Yu Heng gave a talk on the big screen at ComBio.
Sep 14, 2022 - Regi, Lachlan and Eric take home Agnes Campbell prizes and Lamberton scholarships at the Sydney Chemistry prize night - congrats!
Sep 12, 2022 - The book chapter Taylor and Lachlan wrote on encapsulins for microbial production is now online! Thanks to Prof. Bernd Rehm from Griffith University for the invitation to contribute.
Jul 26, 2022 - After a super busy period of conferences (RACI2022) and seminars (Bio21, La Trobe + more), it's a new semester, and we're welcoming Sumyee starting a PhD, along with Chan and Mai who are undergraduate researchers working on all things encapsulin!
May 18, 2022 - Nuren, Taylor and Eric's write-up about pores in protein compartments is accepted in ACS Nano, congrats!
May 16, 2022 - And there it is, the first graduate of the Lau group! Congrats Nuren on a stellar MPhil, you've shown Phil who the true Master is. Also, Biryani Hat.
May 13, 2022 - Busy period of travel for the lab! Team Telomere went to the Australian Peptide Conference 2022 where Lisa and Yu Heng gave talks and the team presented posters, while Team Encapsulin went to the Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology 2022 conference.
Feb 27-28, 2022 - Finally able to do an in-person group activity... lab retreat in the Blue Mountains was a success!
Feb 22, 2022 - Check out this feature in Science Meets Business magazine about our efforts to make carbon-fixing protein cages! (full magazine here)
Feb 5-10, 2022 - Our first in-person conference for a very long time... we went to Lorne Proteins 2022, where Taylor, Reginald and Lachlan all had a busy time presenting their work.
Feb 4, 2022 - Our 'big' encapsulin pore variant manuscript is now online at Science Advances. Congratulations Lachlan, Nuren, and all authors!
Jan 17, 2022 - Welcome to our Denison undergraduate summer scholars Anthea and Joshua, who begin their projects with us this week.
Dec 7, 2021 - Eric and Reginald receive Lamberton PhD scholarships, and Titus a KCA scholarship. Well done!
Dec 7, 2021 - Yu Heng is awarded a SOAR Prize, and the Vice Chancellor's Outstanding Early Career Teaching Award, and SUPRA Supervisor of the Year!
Dec 6, 2021 - Nuren made a cover image for our ChemSystemsChem author profile!
Dec 1, 2021 - A big welcome to Dr Lisa Alcock who joins us as a postdoc!
Nov 30, 2021 - Well done to Erekle and Luke for completing outstanding Dalyell undergraduate projects with our lab.
Nov 15, 2021 - Congrats to Lachlan for his contribution to Li Chen and Frank Sainsbury's article in ACS Synth Biol on polyoma VLP nanocompartments in yeast for metabolic engineering.
Jun 19, 2021 - Taylor's article on molecular display on nanocompartments is out in ChemSystemsChem. Well done Taylor, Eric and Nuren! Read it here.
Jun 10, 2021 - Yu Heng has been recognised as a NSW Tall Poppy by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.
Apr 30, 2021 - We published a review on using cyclisation to stabilise peptides that adopt irregular conformation. Check out the RSC Medicinal Chemistry article here, which is part of their Emerging Investigators themed issue.
Go Team Telomere!
Apr 8, 2021 - Taylor was featured in an interview with The Science Pawdcast, a podcast that covers topical science and also happens to feature some cute dogs!
Jan 29, 2021 - Our work on encapsulin pore variants is up as a pre-print on bioRxiv! Thanks to Tobias Giessen (Michigan) and Frank Sainsbury (Griffith) for being great collaborators.
In fact, so is Li Chen's pre-print from the groups of Frank Sainsbury and Claudia Vickers - happy to have helped out with this work!
Dec 15, 2020 - Grant success! We have received a 2021 NHMRC Ideas grant to collaborate with Prof. Hilda Pickett at the Children's Medical Research Institute on characterising and targeting the DBHS proteins in telomerase assembly.
Dec 14, 2020 - A few bright points to celebrate at the end of a tough year - Nuren won a best talk award at the RACI Supramolecular Symposium; Lachlan picked up both the best talk and people's choice awards at our Chemistry Postgradaute Symposium; Yu Heng received an award from the Drug Discovery Initiative for best transdisciplinary team for an ongoing project.
Dec 4, 2020 - Lovely North Sydney spot for the end of year lab BBQ with the Wickham group.
Aug 19, 2020 - Our local celebrity postdoc Taylor is on FBi Radio 94.5 FM as part of Live in the Lab for Aus Science Week, talking about how our science has been turned into music! You can hear the track here, and read the Chemistry World article here!
Aug 3, 2020 - Yu Heng is featured on The Guardian as part of the Westpac Scholars feature, under Tech and Engineering, and the Environment and Agriculture.
Jul 1, 2020 - Eric returns to commence his PhD! He'll be getting on with some fun encapsulin projects, and maybe some computational tinkering...
Jun 9, 2020 - A big welcome to Taylor, who joins us as our very first postdoc!
Mar 16, 2020 - Yu Heng has been awarded a Westpac Research Fellowship to support his research on encapsulin protein cages as synthetic organelles!
Mar 13, 2020 - After much resistance, it has happened. Yu Heng is now on Twitter @YuHengLau.
Mar 3, 2020 - We had our first group retreat! Welcome to our new starters for 2020 - Titus for Honours, Eva for MPhil, and Haritha for PhD.
Jan 7, 2020 - Krishna's ACS Omega paper on synthesising and computationally analysing more functionalised versions of the Sondheimer strained dialkyne is out!
Dec 31, 2019 - A massive congratulations to Quynh for securing a Sydney Vital Top-Up scholarship, Lachlan for securing a CSIRO Synbio FSP scholarship, and Reginald for securing a Postgraduate Teaching Fellowship!
Dec 6, 2019 - Welcome to Oliver and Sophia, our Denison summer scholars this year, who will be working on drug discovery at telomeres.
Nov 30, 2019 - Congratulations to Eric and Rishik for completing 2019 Honours with First Class, and Annmaree for doing a fantastic DL undergraduate project in Semester 2.
Oct 16, 2019 - Yu Heng gave a talk on encapsulin engineering at the Synthetic Biology Australisia conference up at Customs House in Brisbane.
Aug 9, 2019 - A throwback, Krishna's paper on water-soluble strained dialkynes is out in OBC.
Apr 15, 2019 - Congratulations to Lachlan, Paris and Reginald for graduating with First Class Honours today!
Apr 9, 2019 - Yu Heng has been awarded a J G Russell award from the Australian Academy of Science.
Mar 8, 2019 - Group BBQ time for the end of 2019 summer, with the Wickham, Lakhwani and Waterhouse groups!
Mar 1, 2019 - Welcome to Quynh who is starting a PhD with us after an MChem at St Andrews.
Feb 20, 2019 - As part of the amazing Poladian Project, Yu Heng teamed up with Dr Anna Wang (UNSW) to deliver a workshop on 'Cooking with Scientists'... featuring emulsions, bread, and Ruby chocolate =)
Feb 12, 2019 - Yu Heng gave a talk at the Lorne Proteins conference, thanks to the support of an Anders Young Investigator Award. Lachlan also presented a poster at the conference!
Feb 5, 2019 - Welcome to Eric and Rishik who are joining the group for Honours this year. Also, welcome to Joanna, Nuren, and Suleka, who are doing summer projects with us!
Jan 31, 2019 - After a lot of work by a lot of people, it's finally out...! Our work on a linker toolbox approach for peptide stapling is now out in ACS Chemical Biology.
Nov 27, 2018 - Hooray! Yu Heng has been awarded a ARC DECRA fellowship for 2019-2021.
Nov 13, 2018 - Congratulations to Lachlan, Paris, and Reginald for completing a fantastic year of research and achieving First Class Honours!
Oct 2, 2018 - Yu Heng has been awarded a 2018 Selby Research Award from the Selby Scientific Foundation.
Aug 18, 2018 - Our Honours projects for 2019 are up! Some general Honours information can also be found on the Faculty website.
Aug 6, 2018 - Erin and Lucy are joining the group as undergraduate TSP students for the semester!
Jul 11, 2018 - A warm welcome to Chuyang Zhang, who is visiting us as an exchange student from Nanjing University =)
Jul 6, 2018 - Yu Heng spoke about all things Encapsulin related at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo. Thanks for hosting, Dr Tony Jia!
May 15, 2018 - Check out the new photos of our Incubator lab space.
Apr 17, 2018 - Our latest work on encapsulins with Dr Tobias Giessen (Harvard) has now been published in Nature Communications.
Feb 16, 2018 - We had our inaugural joint lab BBQ with Dr Shelley Wickham and the DNA group!
Feb 6, 2018 - It's the start of a new year, and we're up and running! We've got Lachlan, Paris and Reginald who are starting Honours, as well as Michael and Oliver on Denison summer scholarships!
Oct 18, 2017 - Yu Heng spoke about the group's research at UQ and the Australian Peptide Conference.
Oct 2, 2017 - Honours projects are available for 2018 - check out the School of Chemistry Honours website.
Oct 1, 2017 - The website goes live!
(after an impromptu stack overflow crash-course on HTML5/CSS3)