Rigaku Symposium at Yale University

Dr. Ferrara has spent the last 30 years developing hardware and software tools for X-ray crystallography and X-ray imaging for the research community. He is currently Chief Science Officer, Rigaku Americas Corp and Vice President, X-ray Research Laboratory, Rigaku Corporation. Dr. Ferrara is a member and past chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the BioTech Institute of the Lone Star Community College System. Dr. Ferrara is the President of the America Crystallographic Association and the Books Editor for ACA RefleXions. Dr. Ferrara is also a Texas State Firefighters' and Fire Marshals' Association certified firefighter and National Registry Emergency Medical Responder. He has been a member of Timber Lakes Volunteer Fire Department for over 25 years and Treasurer for 15 years. Dr. Ferrara received both his Bachelor of Science and Doctorate degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He conducted undergraduate research in ion cyclotron resonance under Prof. R. C. Dunbar while his graduate research focused on physical organometallic chemistry under Prof. Wiley C. Youngs. Upon completing his doctorate in 1988, he joined Molecular Structure Corporation, which became a subsidiary of Rigaku Corporation in 1996.

After undergraduate studies at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Robert Bücker obtained a PhD degree in experimental quantum physics from the Vienna University of Technology. In 2013, he joined the department of Prof. Dwayne Miller at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg and the University of Toronto, where he worked on developing novel techniques to visualize the atomic structure and dynamics of beam-sensitive biological specimens using electron diffraction and microscopy. In 2020, he continued this line of research as a postdoc within a shared project between the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Group of Prof. Meytal Landau) and the Leibniz Institute of Virology (Group of Prof. Kay Grünewald), studying aggregation dynamics and polymorphism of functional amyloid fibrils using cryo-electron microscopy. Returning to diffractive methods, in 2022 he joined Rigaku as product manager for electron diffraction, steering the development of the XtaLAB Synergy-ED, Rigaku’s fully integrated solution for three-dimensional microcrystal electron diffraction (3D ED/MicroED).

Brandon Q. Mercado completed his undergraduate studies at Vassar College. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis, where he focused on crystallography with Profs. Marilyn M. Olmstead and Alan L. Balch. He pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine, as a DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Postdoctoral Fellow exploring nanoparticle thin films with Prof. Matt D. Law. He is currently the Director of the Structural Science Facility in the Chemical and Biophysical Instrumentation Center at Yale University, where he has been a vital part of the Department of Chemistry for over a decade. His expertise lies in determining the spatial arrangement of atoms within crystals, which is essential for understanding the structures of new compounds. In addition to supporting research, he is dedicated to teaching, offering courses such as "Fundamentals of Chemical Crystallography and Diffraction"

Dr. Michael W. Martynowycz is an Assistant Professor of Structural Biology at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine. He pioneers Microcrystal Electron Diffraction (MicroED) and complementary cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo EM) methods to obtain atomic resolution structures of challenging macromolecular assemblies. His laboratory has developed automated, high throughput pipelines for direct powder to structure analysis of small molecules and for focused ion beam milling of lipidic cubic phase samples in membrane protein studies. These approaches enable ab initio phasing of membrane protein microcrystals, ion channels, and GPCRs that resist conventional X ray and single particle methods. His work drives a deeper understanding of receptor activation, ion transport, and ligand binding at the molecular level.

Dr. Martynowycz earned his B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Loyola University Chicago and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory. As an HHMI Janelia postdoctoral fellow, he established rapid MicroED data collection protocols, and at UCLA he extended these methods to complex eukaryotic membrane proteins. His blend of physics training and hands on microscopy expertise uniquely equips him to push the frontiers of structural chemical biology and to accelerate structure guided therapeutic development.

Keisuke Saito is a Director of Application Science and holds a PhD material science. He has been focused on X-ray diffraction (XRD) since 1996. He has extensive experience in the application field including battery, semiconductor, photoelectric, piezoelectric, and ferroelectric. He studied characterization of piezo- and ferroelectric materials using XRD at Tokyo Institute of Technology for his PhD. He enjoys using the skills he learned to measure and analyze functional powder and thin film materials. In the webinar, he helps professionals how to find out the best configurations for XRD depending on targets.

Mingjiang Zhong is an Associate Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at Yale University, with joint appointments in the Departments of Chemistry and Materials Science. He received his B.S. from Peking University and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Professors Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Tomasz Kowalewski. Prior to joining Yale, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Professors Jeremiah Johnson and Bradley Olsen. His research integrates polymer science and engineering, synthetic and physical materials chemistry, and catalysis to tackle pressing challenges in global health and sustainability. Zhong is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and he was named a PMSE Young Investigator by the American Chemical Society.

Amymarie K. Bartholomew is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. Her lab's research focuses on the design and synthesis of inorganic materials with stimuli-responsive properties for applications in ultrathin and transparent electronics, sensing, and solar energy capture. Prior to starting at Yale in 2023 she received her Ph.D. in Chemistry with Prof. Ted Betley at Harvard University and worked with Prof. Xavier Roy at Columbia University as an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Chemical Sciences.

Dr. Pierre Le Maguerès obtained a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and small molecule crystallography at the University of Rennes (France) in 1995, working under Dr. Lahcene Ouahab on the synthesis and analysis of molecular materials combining inorganic polyoxometalates and organic cation radicals based on tetrathiofulvalene derivatives. From 1996 to 2000, Dr. Le Maguerès worked as a postdoctoral researcher with renowned Prof. Jay Kochi at the University of Houston, where he pursued his work on the synthesis and X-ray characterization of air-sensitive cation radicals and charge transfer complexes. In 2000, deciding to broaden his horizons and learn protein crystallography, Dr. Le Maguerès joined the biochemistry department at the University of Houston and worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Kurt Krause on the design and X-ray characterization of potential new inhibitors for alanine racemase, a protein essential for the growth of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.

Seth Herzon completed his undergraduate studies at Temple University, obtained a PhD in 2006 from Harvard University under the guidance of Professor Andrew G. Myers, and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Professor John F. Hartwig at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. He began at Yale in 2008 and is currently the Milton Harris ’29 Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Pharmacology and Therapeutic Radiology at the Yale School of Medicine and is a Member of the Yale Cancer Center. Herzon's research is centered on organic synthesis with an emphasis on the molecular mechanism of action and structure–function studies of anticancer and microbiome-derived secondary metabolites. In 2021 he co-founded the oncology company Modifi Biosciences, which was acquired by Merck and Company in the Fall of 2024. From 2018–2023 has served as an Associate Editor for The Journal of Organic Chemistry.

He has been recognized for his accomplishments by a number of awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, a Searle Scholar Award, a Fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a Cottrell Scholar Award of the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement, a Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award of the American Chemical Society, the Novartis Chemistry Lectureship, the Synthesis/Synlett Award in Organic Chemistry, the Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator, the Thieme–IUPAC Award, the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award in Organic Synthesis, the Wilson Prize, a Yale Faculty Innovation Award, a Creativity Extension Award from the National Science Foundation, and the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. From 2018–2019 he was a member of the United States Defense Science Study Group, Sponsored by the Institute for Defense Analyses.