Reimagining drug discovery through receptor science.

Dr. Shuguang Yuan is a GPCR scientist and computational drug discovery leader whose work spans receptor mechanisms, structure-based design and AI-enabled molecular discovery. Supported by a Marie Curie fellowship, his doctoral research was conducted at EPFL, the Polish Academy of Sciences and KU Leuven; he later received a Marie Curie–ETH postdoctoral fellowship.

In 2014, Dr. Yuan and collaborators reported the continuous internal water pathway associated with GPCR activation in Nature Communications, providing a mechanistic framework for rational agonist and antagonist design. He subsequently spent five years in computer-aided drug design at Actelion/Idorsia in Basel and has helped advance designed molecules into clinical development. He has been included in the World’s Top 2% Scientists ranking since 2022 and was recognised as a 2026 Global Highly Cited Scholar.

Professor Horst Vogel is Professor Emeritus at EPFL, a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. His research has shaped the study of membrane-protein structure and dynamics, GPCR signalling and bioanalytical technologies.

Across a career spanning more than four decades, Professor Vogel has developed methods for measuring receptor activation and drug–membrane-protein interactions in physiologically relevant settings. He previously worked at the Max Planck Institute, the University of Basel Biozentrum and Karolinska Institutet, and joined EPFL in 1994 as Professor of Physical Chemistry. He is also a recipient of the Chinese Government Friendship Award.