Xu Group

Dr Hongyi Xu is a Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow in the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the development and application of electron crystallography, MicroED/3D electron diffraction, SerialED, and cryo-electron microscopy methods for determining structures from crystals that are too small, too beam-sensitive, or too heterogeneous for conventional crystallographic approaches.

Hongyi completed a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechatronics and a PhD in Materials Engineering at the University of Queensland, where his doctoral research focused on electron microscopy and semiconductor nanomaterials. He received the Dean’s Award for Research Higher Degree Excellence and the John Simmons Prize for the best PhD thesis of the year in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering. He then moved to Stockholm University as a Wenner-Gren Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Professor Xiaodong Zou’s group, where he initiated the development of MicroED methods for studying biomolecules.

In 2018, Hongyi established his independent research program at Stockholm University, developing electron crystallography methods for structural studies of inorganic materials, small organic molecules, pharmaceuticals, peptides, and macromolecules. His group and collaborators reported the first previously unknown protein structure solved by MicroED and demonstrated that MicroED can reveal protein–ligand binding interactions, helping establish electron diffraction as a powerful approach for structural chemistry and structural biology.

At ANU, Hongyi’s group is building an advanced electron crystallography platform that connects method development, high-throughput data collection, automated data processing, and applications across chemistry, materials science, pharmaceutics, and biology. His current work is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship on electron crystallography methods for multidisciplinary applications. He is also involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in crystallography, electron microscopy, structural biology, and chemical biology.

Research interests

The Xu Group develops and applies electron crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy methods to determine structures from micron- and nanometre-sized crystals. We aim to make high-resolution structure determination possible for samples that are difficult or impossible to study using conventional single-crystal X-ray diffraction, including nanocrystalline materials, pharmaceuticals, peptides, and macromolecular crystals.

Current research directions include:

• Development of 3D electron diffraction/MicroED methods for structure determination of inorganic materials, small organic molecules, pharmaceuticals, peptides, and macromolecules.
• Serial electron diffraction and high-throughput MicroED for rapid screening of multiphase samples, polymorphs, and protein–ligand complexes.
• Automated and semi-automated workflows for crystal finding, data collection, data processing, merging, clustering, structure solution, and reporting.
• Electron crystallography approaches for structure-based drug discovery, including fragment and ligand screening from microcrystals.
• Studies of crystallisation, polymorphism, structural heterogeneity, and radiation sensitivity in pharmaceutical and biological samples.
• Integration of electron diffraction, cryo-EM single-particle analysis, cryo-electron tomography, and advanced transmission electron microscopy for multi-scale structural characterisation.

The group welcomes collaborations in structural chemistry, pharmaceutical solid-state analysis, chemical biology, materials chemistry, porous materials, peptide and protein crystallography, and method development for electron diffraction and cryo-EM.