ACA Election Candidate

Tamir Gonen: Candidate for MicroED SIG Chair Elect

Tamir Gonen is a structural biochemist and membrane biophysicist based out of the University of California, Los Angeles best known for his contributions to structural biology of membrane proteins, membrane biochemistry and electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) particularly in electron crystallography of 2D crystals and for the development application of Microcrystal Electron Diffraction or MicroED where 3D crystals are used.

Professor Gonen was educated at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in the laboratories of Edward N. Baker and Joerg Kistler where he worked on crystallization of membrane proteins. During his doctoral studies Gonen traveled to Harvard Medical School to the laboratory of Thomas Walz to learn cryoEM. For his postdoctoral studies Professor Gonen joined the laboratory of Thomas Walz and worked closely with Yifan Cheng and Stephen C. Harrison on the determination of the water channel Aquaporin-0 to 1.9Å resolution by electron diffraction of double layered crystals. This was the first atomic resolution structure by cryoEM published in 2005 in Nature. In the same year, Gonen became an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine. In 2009 he was awarded a Career Development Award from the American Diabetes Association as well as becoming an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2011 Gonen was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure at the University of Washington and has moved his laboratory to the Janelia Research Campus of HHMI as a Group Leader. At Janelia Gonen continued to make significant contributions to membrane biophysics by solving structures of secondary transporters and channels as well as spearheading the development of a new field in cryoEM called MicroED, or Microcrystal Electron Diffraction. Gonen published the proof of principle paper in eLife in 2013 and coined the term MicroED. Gonen became a Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2013. He is currently an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. Over the years Gonen consistently pushed the envelope in cryoEM and has now determined important structures at sub atomic resolutions with MicroED. Dr. Gonen co-authored more than 100 publications in structural biology and membrane biophysics and mentored several trainees who are now tenured professors around the USA. Gonen is the director of the MicroED Imaging Center at UCLA where he and his team hold MicroED workshops and continue to develop and optimize the method.

I would be honored to serve as the first chair elect of the electron crystallography and MicroED SIG and to continue serving the community in this capacity.