Research

Fluorescence microscopy has become the most widely used technique in cellular biology for noninvasive, time-resolved imaging with high molecular specificity. However, the diffraction of light limits the resolution of standard microscopes to ~250 nm, thus preventing detailed analyses of molecular structures. The development of PALM/STORM super-resolution microscopy (SRM) has pushed the boundaries of optical resolution to a few nanometers so that an optical analysis of the nano-biostructures has become possible. However, the axial resolution of common 3D SRM is 40 – 70 nm, which cannot resolve many cellular structures, especially not on the level of structural biology. My overall aim is to push the resolution limit of this technique down to < 10 nm in all 3D, enabling structural studies of large dynamic protein assemblies inside intact cells.

Our research interests include:

1. Super-resolution Imaging

2. Adaptive optics

3. Biomedical image processing

4. Correlative light and electron microscopy