Cellular behavior depends on the activities of countless individual biomolecules. Compared to population-based methods, the ability to simultaneously perturb and analyze individual molecules provides a more direct and quantitative understanding, and unprecedented insights, of how these molecules function. We are passionate about performing these single molecule studies in individual cells, to quantitatively investigate important but currently inaccessible molecular and cellular biology questions, and then to achieve more predictive cellular manipulation.

Our interdisciplinary lab integrates diverse approaches (from molecular biology to deep learning, from time-lapse movies to magnetic tweezers, from high-resolution imaging to mammalian cell engineering, from photonics to integrated electronic circuits) and to develop more sensitive and powerful single molecule tools, for probing fundamental biological questions and for biomedical applications.