UB's Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) over 160 people on August 6th, 2025 for the inaugural meeting of the Western New York Strucutral Biology Collaborative Symposium. The event, organized by the WNY Structural Biology Collaborative, drew faculty members, postdocs, students and industry representatives from from across the region,  from UB, University of Toronto, University of Rochester, Cornell, Syracuse, Binghamton, and SUNY Upstate Medical. While current research was the focus, many of the organizers and attendees hoped that this will be the beginning of something bigger. Monica Pillon, an assistant professor in UB's Department of Structural Biology and one of the organizers of this symposium said, "We are building bridges and partnerships between people in structural biology and people in other fields who see the value in structural biology.”

See the UBNow article for further information.