Michał R. Szymański, PhD

Michal R. Szymanski is the Head of the Structural Biology Laboratory at the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology of the University of Gdansk and the Medical University of Gdansk (IFB UG & GUMed), and a Professor at the University of Gdansk. His laboratory investigates the fundamental principles underlying the assembly of multi-protein macromolecular machines involved in nucleic acid metabolism, with the goal of defining their structures and gaining mechanistic insight into their activity and regulation.

Michal earned his degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of Houston, USA, and completed his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas, USA. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Pharmacology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. In 2017, he joined IFB UG & GUMed in Gdansk, Poland. He received his habilitation in 2019 and was appointed Head of the Structural Biology Laboratory.

Research in his lab has been supported by numerous competitive grants from the National Science Centre of Poland (POLONEZ, SONATA BIS, OPUS, POLONEZ BIS), the Foundation for Polish Science (First Team, First Team FENG), EMBO (Installation Grant, YIP Pilot Grants), and the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant). He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications in journals including Science, Nature Communications, PNAS, The EMBO Journal, JACS, Nucleic Acids Research, and JBC, in addition to several patent applications, more than 70 poster presentations, and over 30 invited talks.