Date: 26 February 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Venue: Mrs Chen Yang Foo Oi Telemedicine Centre, 2/F, William M.W. Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road
Host: Professor Michael Hӓusser

Hao Shen, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Scientist at the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington. He was among the first graduating class of the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University, and became the first student to complete the Ph.D. program in Molecular Engineering at the University of Washington under the supervision of Prof. David Baker. During his Ph.D., he pioneered the de novo design of self-assembling helical protein filaments, with results published in Science, establishing a new direction for precisely controlling filament assembly across a wide range of geometries.

As a postdoc in the Baker Lab, he has continued to advance the frontier of protein design by developing progressively more controllable filament systems, including pH-responsive protein filaments (Nature Nanotechnology), a nucleation-limited and polarized-growth allosterically modulatable filament (bioRxiv, under review at Nature Chemical Biology), inducibly assembling multi-component filaments (bioRxiv, under review at Nature Synthesis), and the de-novo design of a random protein walker (submitted to Nature). These systems demonstrate levels of assembly dynamics and regulation approaching those of natural cytoskeletal filaments, providing new platforms for functional biomaterials.

His research has further expanded to functional protein nanomaterials, including the design of conductive protein nanowires, far-red fluorescent protein filaments, and chlorophyll-binding filaments for long-range energy transfer, with potential applications in bioelectronics, energy transfer, and smart materials. To date, he has published multiple papers in Science, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Biotechnology, filed one U.S. patent application, and received honors including a Protein Science Travel Award and the UW Biochemistry Department Fellowship.

I have been dedicated to the de novo design of self-assembling protein filaments for a decade. I began with single-omponent fibers featuring defined structures, tunable diameters, and dynamic assembly. By continually advancing our methodology, I now design multi-component, ligand-induced, environmentally responsive, and nucleation-controlled protein filaments up to 10 µm in length with high rigidity. In parallel, I have created functional protein fibers for applications including conductive nanowires, fibers with energy-transferable ligands, and fibers that bind carbon nanotubes or exhibit designed fluorescence.

With the ability to program functional proteins into helical filament assemblies, I am deeply interested in developing protein-fiber-based nanomachines such as nanoscale walkers and self-assembling smart materials. Controlled assembly can serve as a signal-amplification platform for diagnostics. The defined filament architectures enable scaffolding of proteins of interest for cryo-EM structure determination. These filaments also interface with inorganic materials to create complex hybrid systems. Beyond biotechnological applications, precisely designed helical filaments offer significant opportunities to study molecular self-assembly mechanisms and their interactions with cellular biology through in vivo assembly.

All are welcome.