Biography
Chih-Hang is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He trained at The Sainsbury Laboratory, UK, where he completed both his PhD and postdoctoral research before establishing his laboratory at Academia Sinica in 2020. His research focuses on plant immunity, resistosome biology, and plant biotechnology, combining live-cell imaging, molecular genetics, and microbial engineering to understand how plants respond to pathogen infection and how gene delivery technologies can be extended to diverse plant species. His work has uncovered key mechanistic insights into resistosome-mediated hypersensitive cell death, including the spatiotemporal dynamics of calcium signaling and organelle perturbation during immune activation. He also led the development of a novel broad-host-range agrobacterial strain that enables efficient transient gene expression across a wide range of crop and wild plant species, providing new opportunities for plant functional genomics and biotechnology. He was selected as an European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Global Investigator in 2024.