Huaizong Shen

Principal Investigator

Westlake University

Short Biography

Dr. Huaizong Shen is a Principal Investigator and Doctoral Supervisor at Westlake University’s School of Life Sciences. After earning his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University (2017) and completing postdoctoral training at Tsinghua University School of Medicine (2017–2019), he joined Westlake University in 2019 to establish his independent research group. His early work pioneered the high-resolution structural determination of eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium channels (NaV channels), a landmark achievement in the field. Currently, his team investigates disease mechanisms and targeted therapies for voltage-gated potassium channels while developing AI-enhanced cryo-EM methodologies. Dr. Shen has authored influential studies in journals such as Science, Molecular Cell, and Nature Catalysis, with over 2,800 citations. Recognized as a National Leading Scientist in Science and Technology Innovation and recipient of the Excellent Young Scientist Fund (NSFC), he also leads projects under China’s National Key R&D Program. Beyond research, he serves on the Standing Committee of the Communist Youth League of Hangzhou and chairs the Life Health Committee of the Zhejiang Youth Association for Science and Technology.

Presentation Topic: AI empowered structural biology and rational drug design
Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has become a premier technique for determining high-resolution structures of biological macromolecules. However, its broad application is constrained by the demand for specialized expertise. To address this limitation, we introduce the Cryo-EM Image Evaluation Foundation (Cryo-IEF) model, a versatile tool pre-trained on ~65 million cryo-EM particle images through unsupervised learning. Cryo-IEF excels in diverse cryo-EM processing tasks, including particle classification by structure, pose-based clustering, and image quality assessment. Building on this foundation, we developed CryoWizard—a fully automated single-particle cryo-EM processing pipeline enabled by fine-tuned Cryo-IEF for efficient particle quality ranking. CryoWizard resolves high-resolution structures across samples of varied properties and effectively mitigates the prevalent challenge of preferred orientation in cryo-EM. Together, Cryo-IEF and CryoWizard significantly advance the field by rendering cryo-EM technology more accessible, efficient, and robust, with broad implications for life sciences research and rational drug design.