FHS seminar series by Dr. William Chong Hang CHAO

Dr. William Chao was born in Macau where he attended Chan Sui Ki Perpetual Help College until the age of 16. He then went to the UK to study GCE A levels and subsequently enrolled into University of Oxford to study Biochemistry. He performed his PhD research work at Professor David Barford’s lab at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, during which he determined the structure of the mitotic checkpoint complex. This protein complex is a key determinant of the anaphase onset and for this work, Dr. Chao published a Nature Article as a first author. After his PhD, he joined Dr. Martin Singleton’s lab at the Francis Crick Institute in London as an independently funded CRUK fellow. He determined the structure of the 250-kDa cohesin loader Scc2-Scc4 complex, which is essential for understanding sister-chromatid cohesion.

Dr. Chao’s past and current research focuses on studying the structures and functions of key cell-cycle regulators. Moving forward, he plans to start his own lab to study cohesin’s functions in chromosome loop formation and transcription regulation.