Naturalized U.S. citizen, 2000. B.S. ﴾Biochemistry﴿ University of Stirling, Scotland, 1982. Ph.D ﴾Biochemistry﴿, Oxford University, 1985. Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University, 1985‐2000. Assistant professor, University of California San Diego 1990‐ 1995; associate professor, 1995‐1999; professor, 1999‐2008; CHAIR, CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, CENTRE FOR GENOMIC REGULATION, 2008‐. Recipient: Pirie‐Reid Scholarship, Oxford University; Damon‐Runyon Walter‐Winchell Postdoctoral Fellowship; American Cancer Society ﴾California Division﴿ Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship; Basil O'Connor Starter Scholars Award; Established investigator of the American Heart Association; senior investigator award from the Sandler’s program for asthma research; Elected fellow AAAS, 2005. Elected member EMBO 2009. ASBMB‐MERCK award 2013. Editorial board: Cell 1995‐2001; MBOC 1999‐ 2015; JCB 2007‐. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol 2008‐2014; Senior editor: eLife 2014‐; Miller visiting professor, UC Berkeley, 2016; elected ASCB fellow, 2018. NGBT, excellence in science award ﴾India﴿ 2019; Humboldt research award, Germany ﴾2020﴿; ERC advanced grant ﴾ 2011‐2016﴿; Red Bird Visiting professor, Institute of Advanced studies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2023); ERC Synergy grant ﴾2020‐2027﴿. STATEMENT OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS Malhotra elucidated how the Golgi complex is partitioned during cell division, revealing this to be a cell‐cycle check point. In a systematic search for drugs that could provide starting points for mechanistic analysis, Malhotra discovered a natural product, Ilimaquinone ﴾IQ﴿, that massively vesiculates the Golgi at interphase to resemble the mitotic state. Pursuing the mechanism of action of IQ led Malhotra to elucidate a novel paradigm for vesicle biogenesis in which a kinase signaling cascade results in activation of a phospholipase to generate a local excess of diacylglycerol which physically drives vesicle budding. This was the first demonstration of how vesicles of variable sizes can be created. Malhotra next performed genome‐wide screens to uncover new components of the cells’ secretory apparatus. He discovered the TANGO1 gene family needed to selectively sort and package large and complex cargoes like collagens and chylomicrons for export from the endoplasmic reticulum. Malhotra went on to dissect TANGO1’s mechanism of action, ultimately solving a long‐standing problem of how cells can make “made‐to‐measure” transport intermediates capable of packaging and secreting cargos bigger than the “one size fits all” COPII vesicles. Another TANGO gene revealed a unique calcium‐based cargo sorting pathway at the Golgi complex. Malhotra has been a pioneer uncovering the essential machinery and mechanisms for protein secretion from specialized human cells including; mucin secretion from goblet cells in the lung and collagen secretion from skin cells. He also leads our understanding of how proteins that cannot enter the conventional ER‐Golgi pathway are exported.

Yihong Ye is a Distinguished Investigator and the Deputy Research Director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CIBR). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his postdoctoral training in Dr. Tom Rapoport’s lab at Harvard Medical School. He started his independent research career as a Tenure Track Investigator at the National Institutes of Health and was promoted to Senior Investigator with tenure in 2012. He served in this position until he joined CIBR in January 2026. His research is focused on the mechanisms that regulate protein and organelle homeostasis and its role in neurodegenerative diseases.

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology at Gyeongsang National University College of Medicine. My research interests focus on identifying novel cellular stress markers and elucidating the mechanisms linking cellular stress responses to the onset and progression of various diseases, including cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

A/Prof Shin Hye Noh is a Research Assistant Professor at the Severance Biomedical Science Institute, Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Republic of Korea, and also serves as an Instructor in the Department of Pharmacology at the same institution. She holds a Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Pharmacology from Yonsei University College of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering from Yonsei University College of Engineering.

Dr. Chih-Wen Shu is a Professor and Director at the Institute of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU). He received his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan. During his doctoral training, he conducted two years of research at the Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), focusing on cancer biology. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Shu completed postdoctoral training at the Genome and Chemical High-Throughput Screening Center, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (SBMRI), where he specialized in large-scale genomic and chemical screening technologies. His postdoctoral research was supported by a fellowship from the SASS Foundation for Medical Research and grant funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. Since establishing his independent laboratory in Taiwan in 2011, Dr. Shu has led a translational cancer research program at the interface of molecular target validation and small-molecule drug discovery. His research primarily focuses on the development of therapeutic targets and novel anticancer agents. Dr. Shu has authored more than 100 publications in high-impact international journals, with an H-index of 36 and an i10-index of 79 (Google Scholar). Several of his research findings have been patented in the United States and Taiwan. In addition to his research contributions, Dr. Shu has served as an editor and peer reviewer for over 20 international scientific journals since 2012.