Yu-Hsuan Tsai received his BSc with Honours in Chemistry from National Taiwan University in 2006. He then worked as a research assistant in the group of Shih-Hsiung Wu at Academia Sinica, focusing on the isolation, characterization, and synthesis of bacterial glycoconjugates. In 2007, he joined the group of Peter H Seeberger at ETH Zurich and later moved with the group to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in 2009, where he contributed to diverse projects in carbohydrate chemistry, including dendrimer design, carbohydrate–antibody interactions, synthetic inositol phosphoglycans as insulin mimetics, and the total synthesis of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchors.
In 2012, he became a postdoctoral fellow with Jason W Chin at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where he worked on genetic code expansion and its applications in mammalian systems. He subsequently established his independent research group in the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University before moving to the Institute of Molecular Physiology at the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, where he is currently a Research Fellow.
As of August 2025, Dr. Tsai has published 48 peer-reviewed papers (36 as an independent investigator) in journals including Chem. Soc. Rev., Nat. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem., and Chem. Sci. His group’s work has been highlighted by Science, The Conversation, and other outlets. His distinctions include an EMBO Fellowship (2014), MRC Career Development Fellowship (2012), GW4 Crucible (2017), British Science Association Media Fellowship (2018), and Cardiff Futures Award (2019). He also serves as an Academic Editor for PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports.
Tsai Lab 