Dr Meilan Huang joined Queen’s University Belfast in 2007 as a lecturer. She worked with Prof Fengling Qing's in the Key Laboratory of Organoflorine Chemistry at Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1998-1999. After awarded a PhD degree in Computational Chemistry at Zhejiang University in Feb 2003, she was a postdoc working with Prof Arvi Rauk in the Department of Chemistry at University of Calgary Canada. She was a Welcome Trust research fellow in the Laboratory of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at University of Oxford working with Prof W. Graham Richards, FRS in 2004-2006 and a research fellow working with Prof Artem Cherkasov in Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Canada in 2006-2007. She is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a Fellow of Royal Society of Biology (FRSB).

Her main research area is developing and applying Computational methods for biocatalysis and photocatalysis. She studies the interactions and catalytic mechanism  of various enzymes to direct the rational design of novel biocatalysts for chemical transformations. She published over 70 full research articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals. She is the corresponding author of many publications in top chemistry journals including ACS Catalysis (2022, 12: 4037), ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (2022, 14:47872); SOLAR RRL (2022, 6: 2270071); Chem Comm (2020, 56: 9356 & 2019, 55: 2198), J Am Chem Soc (2019, 141: 19, 7934), Nature Communications (2019, 10: 3198), ACS Catalysis (2016, 6: 11, 7749). She is an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Chemistry.

She has led the Computational team in several major interdisciplinary research projects. She was the PI of Chemistry in the interdisciplinary biotechnological project “Development of a computational and molecular biology platform between QUB and Almac” (2015-2019). She is the PI of chemistry in a new 3-year project (2021-2024) INSIGHT@ "IN Silico-Informed metaGenomic Harvesting Technology", in close collaboration with experimentalists and industry. So far, she has secured over £2m research income with a share of £688k. As the principle supervisor, she has supervised 2 computational postdocs and currently is supervising a postdoc in machine learning.

Computational Chemistry and Biology;

Biocatalysis;

Rational Molecular Design;

Photocatalytis;

Electric Field in Catalysis;

Machine Learning and Statistical Potential

Current teaching commitments:

CCE Summer School Programme (Programme Lead)

Advisor of Stuides Chemistry

Advisor of Studies (Intenational students)

CHE1107: Maths for Chemists and Engineers 

CCE1102: Physical Chemistry Practical labs 

CHM3005C: Computational Chemistry in Drug Discovery (Module Coordinator)

CHM4003: Advanced Physical Chemistry (Module Coordinator)

CHM3010: Practical Skills in Chemistry (Module Coordinator)

CHM3016: Drug Development

CHM4001: Chemistry Research Project

CHM7004: Research Project

2021-2024: "INSIGHT: IN Silico Informed metaGenomic Harvesting Technology platform - Development of an advanced and secure enzyme discovery platform for Almac and QUB" Invest NI, RD11181114, £1,299,329. PI of Chemistry

2021-2023: Royal Society: IEC\NSFC\201177 - International Exchanges 2020 “Machine Learning-assisted Directed Evolution of Enzymes”. PI

2021: Newton Fund Research Links Workshop grant-2020-RLWK12-10149 "Catalytic Chemistry and Chemical Technology of C1 process" British Council. PI

2015-2019: "New Biotechnology: Development of Computational and Molecular Biology Platforms for Almac and QUB" Invest NI, RD3014092, £981,360.  PI of Chemistry

2017: Queen's Student Union "Education Excellence Award"