Xiaowei Zhuang

Xiaowei Zhuang (simplified Chinese: 庄小威; traditional Chinese: 莊小威) (b. January, 1972) is a Chinese-American biophysicist, and the David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard University, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Xiaowei Zhuang is best known for her work in the development of Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) , a super-resolution fluorescence microscopy method, and the discoveries of novel cellular structures using STORM.

Early life and education

Zhuang graduated from the USTC with a B.S. in Physics in 1991. She obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and conducted her thesis research under the supervision of Dr. Yuen-Ron Shen. In 1997-2001, she was a Chodorow Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Steven Chu at Stanford University. She started her faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Department of Physics at Harvard University in 2001.

Research

Zhuang’s laboratory invented Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), a single-molecule-based super-resolution fluorescence microscopy method. The Zhuang laboratory demonstrated three-dimensional super-resolution imaging with STORM. The Zhuang laboratory also discovered several photoswitchable dye molecules that enabled STORM imaging and demonstrated live-cell STORM imaging.

Using STORM, Zhuang and colleagues have studied a variety of biological system, ranging from single-cell organisms to complex brain tissues. These studies led to the discovery of novel cellular structures, such as the periodic membrane skeletons in the axons of neurons and provided insights into many other cellular structures.

The Zhuang laboratory invented a single-cell transcriptome imaging method, MERFISH (multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization), which allows numerous RNA species to be imaged and quantified in single cells in their native context. Zhuang and colleagues used single-molecule FRET to study biomolecules and molecular complexes and developed single-virus tracking methods to study virus-cell interactions.

Honors and awards

• 2015: Foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
• 2015: NAS Award in Molecular Biology
• 2013: Member American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2012: Member National Academy of Sciences
• 2012: Fellow American Physical Society
• 2012: Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science
• 2011: Sackler Prize
• 2010: Max Delbruck Prize
• 2008: Coblentz Award
• 2006: ACS Award in Pure Chemistry
• 2004: Sloan Fellowship
• 2003: David and Lucile Packard Foundation
• 2003: MacArthur Fellows Program
• 2003: Beckman Young Investigators Award