Rate My Professor Hongtao Yu

Dr. Hongtao Yu is a Chair Professor of Cell Biology and Dean of the School of Life Sciences at Westlake University. He received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Peking University in 1990 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1995. Following postdoctoral training in cell biology at Harvard Medical School, he began his independent research career in 1999 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004 and to Professor in 2008. From 2008 to 2019, he served as an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and held the Serena S. Simmons Distinguished Chair in Cancer Immunopharmacology. In December 2019, he joined Westlake University full-time as Chair Professor of Cell Biology and the founding Dean of the School of Life Sciences.

Dr. Yu studies the cellular mechanisms that govern chromosome folding, integrity, and inheritance. His research has contributed significantly to the molecular basis of 3D genome organization and chromosome segregation. He is a recipient of the Damon Runyon Scholar Award (1999), the Burroughs Wellcome New Investigator Award in Pharmacological Sciences (2000), the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (2000), and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award (2003). He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012 and named an Investigator of the New Cornerstone Science Program in 2022. Dr. Yu maintains an active research program with extensive publications in cell biology and related fields.