Dr. Hao Wu, PhD

Halfway through her medical training at Beijing, China, Dr. Hao Wu discovered her love for scientific research. Now, the Wu lab at Harvard Medical School focuses on innate immunology, where they use structural biology as a tool to understand molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern the assembly, localization and regulation of molecules. Science is both her career and her favourite hobby, alongside art museum tours, bike rides and ski trips.

We had the honor of having  an inspiring conversation with Dr. Hao Wu at the 2026 Virology retreat, where we discussed her personal journey, her passion and philosophy, and more scientific questions she hopes to answer.

Q: You're at a dinner party and someone asks what your lab studies. You only have until the appetizers arrive; what do you tell them?

A: I would probably say we try to visualize molecules and cells and deduce what they do! It’s like a little investigative journey, and that’s what we enjoy.

Q: A scientific genie offers to answer one question about viruses for you: no experiment required. What are you asking?

A: That’s a really good question! I wonder how viruses race with the host. Which factors do they care the most about? Do they want to kill the host or do they want to stay in the host for as long as they can? I would be curious. Because sometimes, you know, like SARS-CoV-2, it was very lethal in the beginning. But lethality is not always the best way to sustain their life. Do they optimize for the propagation of their genetic material? What are they optimizing?

Q: Tomorrow, your lab gets unlimited funding, but only for an experiment everyone else thinks is a little crazy. What are you doing?

A: Yes! It’s a really fancy, expensive exploratory experiment. What I’m really into right now is how molecules are arranged in cells. I want to see in resting state versus in challenge state, how do these molecules localize in a spatial fashion? Do they come together in the resting state? Do they change their localization during some kind of infection? I think there’s no established technology to do it right now - you can do these RNA-seq that is spatially determined. But for protein, in situ detection by e.g. mass-spec so far does not have the required subcellular resolution. We are attempting to achieve this using a combination of expansion microscopy and in situ mass spec.

I’m also super interested in this experiment because we are trying to understand the relationship between these random, more dynamic interactions in the cell like within condensates versus ordered structures, like Luochen’s (Hao’s G5 Virology student) filaments (laughs). My hypothesis is that all proteins have a community. None of them are really randomly localized, right? Even when you see them as diffused, they are probably attached to something else as well. So I really want to have this big map of how each protein is situated inside the cell.

Q: A student leaves your lab after five years. What's something you hope they take with them that won't appear anywhere in their dissertation?

A: I think everything is hard, and there’s nothing that’s just there for you - you have to put in the effort. I hope they learn the fact that if they are passionate about anything, they should throw in everything they have. I don’t think you can do anything well if you’re not committed enough. I hope they learn to commit to their passion, and know that they have the intelligence, the skill, and everything to get there. Don’t let the fear of the unknown stop you!

(Interviewer: I definitely need to hear that, so thank you Hao!!)

Q: You unexpectedly get a completely obligation-free Sunday; no emails, no grants, no guilt. Where do we find you?

A: My ideal day… I think I would read a paper, then maybe go to the museum for a bit? Maybe for an hour, then I come back to read more. Maybe I then go on a bike ride for an hour - now I come back, and either read more or think more about whatever that’s in my mind. (What museums do you like?) Oh just art museums! I love the MFA. I love modern art. (And you said you enjoy bike riding?) Yes! There is a biking group in Brookline, and I follow what they do. It’s a community I’m a part of. I stop biking in the winter though. I don’t mind the coldness because you can always dress up warm, I just don’t like the snow on the road! It gets a little dangerous.

Q: Your lab is planning an outing based entirely around one of your interests outside science. What have you signed everyone up for?

A: We’ve done things like hiking… I definitely like hiking! We have done ski trips. (Are you a skier?) Yes! Not great, but I can do a blue mountain. Actually, my first conference was at Lake Tahoe, so I began to ski ever since then.

The last lab trip was to an escape room. That was fun, but I was really bad at it (laughs). The young people are so much better! Maybe I have to do it a few more times. It was my first time and I didn’t even know what to do!

Q: A parallel-universe version of you made one different decision at 18 and never became a scientist. What are they doing now?

A: The route not taken, I guess, was medicine. I dropped out of medicine because I wanted to become a scientist instead. Back in Beijing, when I started doing clinical rounds, I realized that there’s very little that a doctor can do to save a patient. Once this person is going down that road, we have no way to stop it. So that was a disappointment. And then we had half a year of time just dedicated to research, and that got me hooked. And if you are a doctor in China, you are just so busy, you have so many patients - there was no doing both.

But if I could actually just do whatever, I’d probably become a mathematician! When I was in high school, I did a lot of math competitions and I really loved it. It was never developed because my parents said I shouldn’t study math or physics because those weren’t the most useful to society. They wanted me to go into medicine because they believed that if I studied something useful to people, I would always have a job. People won’t turn their back on you when they need you. Those were my parents’ fears from their experiences during the Chinese cultural revolution. I am glad that I didn’t completely follow their advice and instead followed my interest in research.

Q: If you can have coffee with yourself at one point in your scientific career: first-year grad student, postdoc, new PI, etc. Which version would you want to meet, and what do you tell them?

A: I’m not sure which version of me that would be, but I think I know what to say to them. When I was younger, even when I was starting my career, I was more technically driven. I was very obsessed with good structural biology techniques, but I didn’t really ask the bigger biological questions. To some degree I wasn’t trained for it, because I was mostly doing structures during my PhD and postdoc. But if I had realized how interesting biology itself is, I would put in more effort to understand the subject itself and raise more important questions to pursue. I am still enjoying learning biology and investigating it from the lens of structures and mechanisms.

Q: Fast-forward 20 years. What's something happening in virology that you hope today's trainees will look back on and think, "I can't believe they didn't know that yet"?

A: In 20 years, if we have a HIV vaccine, I’d be really curious to know why we couldn't get one right now. What’s the barrier? When I was a postdoc, I worked on CD4 and gp120, and then I moved away from it. People have been doing so much work on it and just couldn't get a vaccine. But at least the treatment options are really good right now.

🔥Rapid Fire 

Virus you'd most want to study if you had to abandon your current system tomorrow?

Coronavirus family

Technique you'd happily never do again?

At one point I was scared of mounting crystals… but later I overcame it!

Technique you secretly find therapeutic?

I’d really like to do more coding if I have time!

Most-used phrase in your lab?

Back at the crystallography age, we used to have a lab song called Set It Up! Because we set up our crystals. It was a Korean song I don’t remember the name of, and part of the lyrics was just Set it up! Set it up!

Go-to coffee/tea order?

Matcha latte 🍵

Current non-science obsession?

NYT crosswords puzzle!

Favorite scientifically inaccurate virus movie?

The Last of Us. It was fungus not virus though!

Lab meeting snack of choice?

We do full lunches! We cycle through different cuisines but right now it’s Thai. We also had pizza and Chinese at some periods. I’ll choose nuts if I have to pick a snack, as I have them in my office now!

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Dr. Wu describes her work as an investigative journey, and our conversation revealed just how far that spirit reaches. From spatial maps of proteins in the cell to unanswered questions about the HIV vaccine and viral survival strategies, she approaches every question with infectious passion and curiosity. One message emerged again and again, and we hope you take it with you as we did: commit fully to what you love, and don't let the fear of the unknown stop you. 

This interview was edited for length and clarity; written by Alex Liu (G2).