Our group is in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Department of Neuroscience, and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology Molecular Therapeutics Division at the University of California, Berkeley. We are a team of highly interdisciplinary scientists working at the intersection of nanomaterials research, near-infrared microscopy, and their application to the study of life.
Life takes on unique characteristics at the molecular scale. We are accustomed to making observations and predictions for the behavior of living systems on a scale that is intuitive for the time and size scales of our day-to-day lives. For centuries, scientific advancements have been on a size-scale that is familiar to us: distances in meters, times in seconds, masses in kilograms, and volumes in liters. However, the building blocks of life: proteins, nucleic acids, cells, all live at a very different scale. When we zoom into life down to the molecular level, the scales used to describe distances, times, masses, and volumes shrink to a level that is not intuitive to us. Our lab builds molecular-scale tools to image aberrations in brain chemistry in a range of developmental and psychiatric disorders, studies the molecular interactions that drive the function of nanoparticle-based therapeutics, and develops crop biotechnologies for agricultural sustainability. Our research has been recently highlighted in NPR, Popular Mechanics, The San Francisco Chronicle, C&E News, and in a TED talk.
It may surprise you to learn that our laboratory’s research is almost entirely supported by philanthropy, instead of federal grants. If you would like to contribute to our research program, we welcome your contribution and involvement. If you would like to support our home programs in the College of Chemistry, or the Department of Neuroscience, we value and welcome your support!
