On 9th October, Prof. Fei SUN from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, gave a talk entitled “Unleashing Chemical Power from Protein Sequence Space for Material Design” at IAPME. At the seminar, Prof. Sun focused on the creation of entirely recombinant protein-based light-sensitive hydrogels by covalently assembling the CarHC photoreceptor proteins using SpyTag-SpyCatcher as well as their potential applications ranging from tissue engineering to environmental remediation. Prof. SUN also introduced a new category of protein chemistries — genetically encoded click chemistry, which directly assembles genetically engineered protein molecules into functional macromaterials.
Prof. Fei SUN is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining HKUST in 2014, Dr. Fei Sun worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2012 and a B.Sc. degree at Peking University in 2007. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the Chicago Biomedical Consortium Scholar Award and The Everett E. Gilbert Memorial Prize in Organic Chemistry.
