TEAM
Kemal Achour
Specialist
Kemal is an assistant specialist in optics in the ABC lab since November 2023, he is very excited about working with lasers and microscopes ! In his free time, Kemal loves exploring and visiting new places and he also loves watching and playing football (or soccer here I guess…)
Eric Betzig, PhD
Co-Founder
After going to Caltech for undergrad, Eric did a PhD at Cornell with a thesis on the development of near-field optics – the first method to break the diffraction barrier in light microscopy. His work has revolutionized the industry from his Nobel Prize winning PALM technology to his latest work on LLSM and AO applications.
Xavier Darzacq, PhD
Co-Founder
Xavier received his BS at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), his Masters & PhD at Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse) and performed his postdoctoral research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with Robert Singer. Xavier’s enjoys kayaking when not performing research. Tjian + Darzacq group studies transcription, focusing on the role imposed by nuclear architecture on the molecules regulating it. They use a model system of cellular differentiation of human primary dermal fibroblasts into myofibroblasts, which is relevant to wound healing. Among the specificities of this system, they show that the maintenance of the fibroblast state depends on a specialized non-canonical mediator complex, which is becoming one of the central projects of the group.
Read more about his lab’s research here: https://www.tjian-darzacq.mcb.berkeley.edu
Akhil Ganti
Summer intern (2024)
Marianne Harrison
Lab Admin
Marianne studied English and Social Geography in her undergraduate education at Berkeley but was drawn to the industry of lab management from the start of her professional career. She is the proud mother of 3 children and additionally the whole lab. In essence her work ensures that the researchers are able to perform their tasks with ease and all operations of the lab run smoothly.
Amir Hay, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
HyoJung (Hazel) Heo
Undergraduate researcher
Jason Hong
Jr. Specialist
Sonya Hong
Summer intern (2024)
Ana Milunovic Jevtic, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Shirou Jing
Summer Undergraduate intern (2024)
Doug Koshland, PhD
Executive Director
Doug received his bachelors in Chemistry from Harverford College, his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and performed his postdoctoral research at University of Washington with Leland Hartwell and University of California, San Francisco with Marc Kirschner.
His laboratory uses budding yeast to study fundamental processes in cell biology. Their approach has been to develop novel genetic reagents and cell biological methods to analyze these complex processes in vivo, coupled with the development and exploitation of in vitro assays to reveal underlying molecular mechanisms. Read more about his lab’s research here: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/koshland/index.html
Gaoxing Liu, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Gaoxiang obtained his Bachelor in Chemistry at Fudan University, China. He then went to Johns Hopkins University, where he studied gas-phase clusters by photoelectron spectroscopy. After getting his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, he decided to transfer from researching the invisible and untouchable gas-phase clusters to studying real-world biological dynamics with the best optical tools. At ABC, he is responsible for constructing and operating the MOSAIC microscope. When not at work, he enjoys going to the gym and watching movies.
Dave Matus, Ph.D.
Researcher
Matthew Mueller
Staff
Matthew received his B.S. from the University of California, Irvine. Anything related to computers, you can bet he’ll have a hand in helping out. He joined the lab in January 2021 as part of the computational staff and hopes to make an impact through his expertise in optimization and high performance computing.
Xiongtao Ruan, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Originating from his roots in China, Xiongtao came to the US and got a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University advised by Robert Murphy in computational biology. He hopes to develop novel bioimaging solutions which allow for higher resolutional analysis of in vivo biological samples as they are imaged by the lab’s MOSAIC microscopes. You can find him playing table tennis or running when he is outside the lab.
Shriya Sankaran
Intern, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Sayan Seal
Graduate Student
Ethan Tam
Undergraduate Researcher
Robert Tjian, PhD
Co-Founder
Tij received his BA at University of California, Berkeley, PhD from Harvard University, and performed his postdoctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with James D. Watson. Tij as an avid fly-fisherman. Tjian + Darzacq lab studies biochemistry of transcription and chromatin transactions, and has identified, isolated and characterized a large number (~100) of essential drosophila and human transcription factors. These regulatory proteins include enhancer/promoter recognition factors, core RNA pol II initiation factors and co-activators that form large multi-subunit complexes at promoter DNA to mediate transcription initiation and decode the genome.
Read more about his lab’s research here: https://www.tjian-darzacq.mcb.berkeley.edu
Gokul Upadhyayula, PhD
Scientific Director
Gokul received his BS at University of California, Irvine; his Masters & PhD at University of California, Riverside and performed his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School with Tomas Kirchhausen. Gokul’s research interests bridge applied engineering with basic science. His earlier work includes studying the charge transfer properties of cyanine dyes and bioinspired electrets using ultra-fast femtosecond spectroscopy during his time at University of California, Riverside; and using lattice light-sheet microscopy (LLSM) with high temporal and spatial resolution at the molecular level during his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School / Boston Children’s Hospital. Gokul is interested in mechanistic questions addressed at a molecular level by fluorescence microscopy imaging acquired with high temporal and spatial resolution. As the scientific director at UC Berkeley’s Advanced BioImaging Center (ABC), Gokul’s vision is to provide state-of-the-art microscopy, and dedicated human and hardware resources capable of handling terabyte to petabyte scale projects. In addition to this, his mission is to develop robust, open source computational workflows that allow scientists to extract biologically meaningful insights.
Read more about his lab’s research here: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/cdb/upadhyayulas
Yijun Wang
Undergraduate researcher
Lucas Yeung
Summer intern (2024)
Meet our team of driven and passionate scientists who are dedicated to providing the world with a closer look into the biological world. Finding our roots from all different walks of life, we work together to provide microscopy solutions for all your needs. We believe in the philosophy work hard and play hard, so you can often find us socializing over dinner or rock climbing after a long days of work.
Alumni
Postdoctoral Researchers
Frederik Görlitz – Postdoc 2021 – 22
Thayer Alshaabi – Postdoc 2021 – 23, Machine Learning Researcher Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus
Staffing
Nate Harrison – 2019 – 2024 High School Volunteer, Undergrad Researcher & Staff Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Aaron Chu Yi Herr –2022 – 2023 Undergrad Researcher & Staff
Melanie Freeman – 2020 – 21, Lab manager. Scientist at Infinimmune
Aaron Sun – 2019 – 22, Undergrad Researcher & Staff, CS PhD Student at UMass Amherst
Adam Zimmerman – 2019 – 2021 Computational Staff and Volunteer, Graduate Student University of San Francisco
Benjamin Purnell – 2021 Undergrad Researcher & Staff
Graduate Students
Cyna Shirazinejad, Ph.D. – 2019 – 23, Affilated Graduate Student. Biological Data Scientist at Eikon Therapeutics
Undergraduates, Interns and Volunteers
Fanliu (Jason) Kong – Summer 2019 Volunteer, Undergraduate Cornell University
Ira Horecka – 2020 Computational Volunteer, Graduate Student University of Toronto
Shawn Hua – Summer 2020 Computational Volunteer, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Yiu (Rice) Ching Siu – Fall 2020 Study-Abroad Undergraduate Researcher. DPhil Candidate in Neuroscience, University of Oxford
Krishna Koka – 2020 – 21 Volunteer, Undergraduate Penn State
Clinton Huynh – Summer 2021 Intern, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Mukul Natarajan – Summer 2021 Volunteer
Zeeshan Patel – 2021 – 22 Undergraduate Computational Volunteer
Tayeba Chowdhury – 2022 Undergraduate Volunteer, UC Berkeley
Kamesh Ayyagari – 2022 – 23 High School Volunteer, UC Irvine
Shreya Ganti – 2022 (Summer) High School Volunteer, U.T. Austin
Mo Zhou – 2022 (Summer) Study-Abroad, Xi’an Jiaotang University Exchange Student
Ranveer Singh – 2022 –23 SJSU Undergraduate Volunteer
Yiu (Rice) Ching Siu
Undergraduate Researcher
Rice is a senior biochemistry student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. This year, she has the chance to study at Berkeley as an HSBC Overseas Scholar and she feels honored to be a member of the ABC. She aspires to be a neuroscientist in the future, hoping to utilize the latest technology to solve multiple unanswered neuroscience problems. At ABC, she is responsible for expansion microscopy. She enjoys singing and baking in leisure time.
Adam Zimmerman
Adam is a Master’s student at University of San Francisco, Eagle Scout and professional problem solver working on bioinformatic solutions to age-related diseases. He joined the lab in the fall of 2019 as a computational intern, spent time as our Research Data Analyst before graduate school
Melanie Freeman
Staff Researcher
Melanie is the lab’s cell culture maven. Melanie received her Bachelor in Biology at Randolph College, Virginia. Melanie loves working hands-on in the lab, teaching and learning from others. She is especially interested in stem cells and their many applications in studying development and modelling disease. She loves animals and outside of the lab she can be found hiking with her dog or volunteering at animal shelters.
Krishna Koka
Volunteer
Krishna is a senior at Hemet High School who has been a member of his high school’s Mock Trial Team, President of student chapter of Habitat for Humanity Community Service, and Comminissioner of Community Serivce for the Associated Student Body. Extracurricular activities include Track & Field, Cross Country, and Choir. Krishna volunteered this summer and fall as a computational intern.
Clinton Huynh
Undergraduate Researcher
Mukul Natarajan
Volunteer
Mukul is a senior at Dublin High School who is very passionate about the technology field and wants to major in Computer Science. Outside of ABC Mukul’s interests include working on other ventures like his sneaker bot company, attending hackathons with friends, and building PCs. Outside of computers and coding he also plays basketball, supports his hometown sports teams and loves to travel.