Khanh Huy Bui (Full CV)

Associate Professor

Canada Research Chair in Cryo-Electron Tomography

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Huy Bui did his Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Ishikawa at ETH Zurich on cilia structure. Afterward, he joined the lab of Dr. Martin Beck at EMBL Heidelberg and revealed the organizing principle of the human nuclear pore complex scaffold. He is fascinated by developing new EM methods to understand the structure and function of complex macromolecules, in particular, the structure of eukaryotic cilia. 

Shintaroh Kubo

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Shintaroh finished his Ph.D at Kyoto University. During his Ph.D., he worked on molecular dynamics of motor protein dynein. As a postdoc in the Bui lab, he is working on understanding the mechanism of microtubule-associated proteins on the structure of the cilia.

Thibault Legal 

Postdoctoral Fellow

Thibault did his PhD in Julie Welburn's lab at the University of Edinburgh where he worked on kinetochore-microtubule attachments in mitosis.
Thibault became really interested in structural biology during his PhD and joined the Bui lab to work on the structure of cilia using cryo-ET and cryo-EM.
Outside of the lab, Thibault enjoys meeting up with friends, going hiking and dancing in nightclubs.

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Melissa Valente

Reserach Assistant

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Melissa completed her M.Sc. degree at Concordia University with Dr. Zerges. She studied the in-situ spatial-temporal localization of photosynthetic complexes and their associated chlorophyll pigment during the chloroplast biogenesis of Chlamydomonas. 

She was born in Canada but her heritage is Italian. She is an introvert who loves to read, grow plants/garden, paint, and is very family oriented. 

She obviously loves science, enjoys research and learning new techniques particularly related to microscopy. Her attraction towards microscopy and imagining stems from her appreciation of photography and her artistic nature. 

Melissa was intrigued and drawn to Bui Lab due to the level of resolution Dr.Bui's work is achieving with cryo-EM.

Lastly, Melissa also has a passion for teaching, and enjoys helping students learn about biology but also about themselves and what drives their passion.

Shun Kai Yang

PhD student

Sky was born free with curiosity towards the natural world, and he wishes to dream free in this mortal coil without chains.  Sky has been pondering mysteries of the universe by playing test tubes since childhood.  He met prince charming (Dr. Bui) and decided to do a Ph.D. on Cryo-EM of ciliary assembly mechanism. Sky is pursuing career in biophysical research, filled with endless questions, just like the blue sky without limit.

Outside of research, Sky challenges the whips of time by swimming, cooking with families and friends, and professional photography (www.skysky.ca).

Corbin Black

PhD student

Corbin obtained his Master from University of Northern British Columbia under Prof. Stephen Rader using crystallography. He is now working his way to be a cryo-EM expert in cilia structure.

Avrin Ghanaeian

Master student

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Avrin is currently a Master student in our lab. She's born and raised in Iran and received a B.Eng. and M.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering with areas of molecular dynamics (MD) of proteins. During her M.Eng. program she studied molecular dynamics of collagens in different connective tissue conditions by MD simulation. Avrin’s research in Bui Lab is to identify and solve structures of various compounds of cilia and the molecular function of cilia machinery by Cryo-EM. At the lab, she loves structural biology of proteins especially their interactions with other proteins/chemicals and to identify the molecular mechanisms of complex protein functions.
Outside of the lab, Avrin likes reading books and spending time with her pets (she has a cat named Think and a dog named Puppet, both are very sweet!).

Katya Peri

Master Student

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Katya is a fast-track BSC-Master ACB student at McGill. Her main academic passion is science and during her time at McGill, she intends to learn as much as she can about the fascinating fields of anatomy, biology, and biochemistry. Katya hopes to include research as part of her future career, which is why she has chosen to join the Bui lab in the summer of 2018. Her goals are to learn more about cilia as well as the innovative projects and revolutionary technology being used to decipher the structure and functioning of these minuscule natural machines.

Phuong Huynh

Undergraduate Student

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​I am an undergraduate student majoring in Anatomy & Cell Biology. After learning about the dynamics of various cytoskeletal structures in the second-year ANAT 262 course (in which Dr. Bui was one of the professors), I became interested in the exciting research being done at the Bui Lab on ciliary structures and joined the lab in the summer of 2021. As someone who is new to research, my goals are to better understand these fascinating structures whilst learning new experimental techniques and skills that I can apply to my future journey in research.  

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Jiaxuan Li 

Undergraduate Student

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Jiaxuan Li is an undergraduate student in Honours Anatomy and Cell Biology at McGill University. She was interested in building three-dimensional models of cellular structures so she joined Dr. Bui’s lab to complete her honors research project. For her, it is like magic to visualize nanometer-scale structures by the modern technique of Cryo-electron tomography.

In Dr. Bui’s lab, she is currently working on reconstructing radial spoke of Tetrahymena of three mutated strains. Jiaxuan has great patience and an indomitable spirit when facing problems. She really enjoys lab work and would like to continue doing research in the future.

Outside lab, Jiaxuan is interested in drawing, painting, and playing board role-playing games.

Zhe Fan

Undergraduate Student in Neuroscience 

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Greetings, I am Zhe, my work involves with developing optimization strategies and troubleshooting for the Bui lab's CryoEM computational workflow. When I am free, I would be making digital art and playing video games.

I am from Edmonton Alberta.