Contact Information
601 South Goodwin Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Office: (217) 300-9239
Research Interests
Research Topics
Immunology, Virology, Molecular Evolution, Protein Structure, Bioinformatics
Studying the evolutionary constraints and trajectories of influenza virus and antibodies by systematically mapping their sequence-structure-function relationships. Saturation mutagenesis; Deep sequencing; High-throughput methodologies; Structural biology; X-ray crystallography; Bioinformatics
Disease Research Interests
Infectious Diseases
Research Description
The Wu lab focuses on three research questions:
- What are the constraints of virus evolution?
- Can we predict antibody specificity?
- Can we improve the quality and speed of vaccine design?
The Wu lab addresses these questions mainly in the context of influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2, using molecular virology, protein biochemistry, next-generation sequencing, high-throughput assays, x-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, and machine learning.
Education
Postdoc, The Scripps Research Institute, 2020
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
B.S., University of Virginia, 2010
Awards and Honors
UIUC I.C. Gunsalus Scholar Award (2025)
UIUC Distinguished Promotion Award (2025)
UIUC MCB Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award (2024)
Vallee Scholar Award (2024)
Viruses Early Career Investigator Award (2022)
UIUC MCB Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2022)
ASV Ann Palmenberg Junior Investigator Award (2022)
Searle Scholar Award (2022)
Michelson Prize (2021)
ESWI Young Scientist Innovative Award (2021)
NIH Director's New Innovator Award (2021)
NIH Pathway to Independence Award (2019)
Croucher Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015-2017)
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Biochemistry
Associate Professor, Biomedical and Translational Sciences
Affiliate, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Recent Publications
Ozgulbas, D. G., Tan, T. J. C., Wen, P. C., Teo, Q. W., Lv, H., Ghaemi, Z., Frank, M., Wu, N. C., & Tajkhorshid, E. (2026). Probing the role of membrane in neutralizing activity of antibodies against influenza virus. Structure, 34(2), 254-263.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.str.2025.11.016
Rivera-Cardona, J., Mahajan, T., Thayer, E. A., Kakuturu, N. R., Teo, Q. W., Lederer, J., Rowland, E. F., Heimburger, K., Sun, J., McDonald, C. A., Mickelson, C. K., Langlois, R. A., Wu, N. C., Milenkovic, O., Maslov, S., & Brooke, C. B. (2026). Intrinsic OASL expression governs heterogeneity in interferon induction during influenza A virus infection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 123(1), Article e2509560123. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2509560123
Calderin, J. D., Zhang, C., Tan, T. J. C., Wu, N. C., & Fratti, R. (2025). Use of Bio-Layer Interferometry (BLI) to Measure Binding Affinities of SNAREs and Phosphoinositides. In Methods in Molecular Biology (pp. 103-117). (Methods in Molecular Biology; Vol. 2887). Humana Press Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-4314-3_7
Gopal, A. B., Lv, H., Pholcharee, T., Ouyang, W. O., Teo, Q. W., Luo, Y., Tang, Y. S., Luo, M., Mok, C. K. P., & Wu, N. C. (2025). Characterization of two non-competing antibodies to influenza H3N2 hemagglutinin stem reveals its evolving antigenicity. Nature communications, 16(1), Article 10557. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65595-1
Gordeev, V., Hölzer, M., Desirò, D., Goraichuk, I. V., Knyazev, S., Solo-Gabriele, H., Skums, P., Karthikeyan, S., Evans, A., Agrawal, S., Lucaci, A. G., Mason, C. E., Su, J. M., Gibas, C., Nagarajan, N., Peres da Silva, R., Drabcinski, N., Munteanu, V., Zhan, L., ... Mangul, S. (2025). Leveraging wastewater sequencing to strengthen global public health surveillance. BMC Global and Public Health, 3(1), Article 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44263-025-00138-w