The department is delighted to announce the hiring of Dr. Shuai Huang, who will join us in the 2022/23 academic year as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Huang will join us from a postdoctoral position at Yale University/Howard Hughes Medical Institute where he has spearheaded systems biology approaches to discover novel plant defense pathways. His most recent work uncovered a new plant immune circuit mobilized by a group of large GTPases that engage in  biological phase behavior segregating into membrane free biomolecular condensates during immune responses to pathogens. This work has discovered a previously unknown physical mechanism that regulates signal transduction in plant defense and opened a new paradigm of research into understanding the role of phase-separated cellular assemblies in immunity and transcriptional control. The Huang lab will use a variety of techniques to examine these novel mechanisms with significant impact on crop protection and food management in the face of climate change, as will as implications for understanding mammalian immunology and protein aggregation diseases in humans such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. We are excited to welcome him to the Molecular Genetics community!