Rate My Professor Maolin Lu

Maolin Lu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Tyler School of Medicine within the Health Science Center. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Engineering in 2006 and Master of Science degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2009 from Xi'an Jiaotong University, a prestigious C9 League institution in China. Dr. Lu completed her PhD in Photochemical Sciences at Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 2014 under the mentorship of Ohio Eminent Scholar Dr. Peter Lu. Subsequently, she pursued postdoctoral training in Microbial Pathogenesis from 2015 to 2021 at Yale University School of Medicine in the Walther Mothes Laboratory, specializing in virology. In June 2021, she joined the University of Texas at Tyler as faculty.

Dr. Lu's laboratory conducts multidisciplinary research spanning biophysical imaging, virology, molecular biology, structural biology, biochemistry, and computational biology, with a primary focus on elucidating virus-host interactions for key viral pathogens including HIV-1, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and HSV. Her investigations target the mechanisms by which viral surface spike proteins facilitate host cell entry via membrane fusion, the molecular basis of antibody recognition and immune evasion, the design and action modes of viral inhibitors, the development of innovative single-molecule technologies, and the roles of host factors in viral cellular entry. This work is supported by competitive grants such as the NIH R35 MIRA award of $1.8 million in 2023—the first such grant to UT Tyler—along with R01 and R56 grants, UT System STARs awards, the Gilead Research Scholars Program, and amfAR Mathilde Krim Fellowships. Dr. Lu has published seminal papers in leading journals, including "Associating HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein structures with states on the virus observed by smFRET" (Nature, 2019), "Real-time conformational dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 spikes on virus particles" (Cell Host & Microbe, 2020), and "Bioorthogonal click labeling of an amber-free HIV-1 provirus for in-virus single molecule imaging" (Cell Chemical Biology, 2024). Her accolades include the 2025 UT System STARs Award, 2024 Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research from UT Tyler School of Medicine, and 2021 UT System Rising STARs Award. She serves on NIH study sections, reviews for journals, co-chairs conferences, delivers invited talks, mentors trainees, teaches graduate courses, and co-directs summer research programs.