TEAM
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
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.
Frederik Görlitz
Postdoctoral Researcher
Frederik obtained his BSc at Heidelberg University, in Germany. He then received his PhD at Imperial College London under Prof. French with a EPSRC Doctoral Price Fellowship. Frederik specialized in optical microscopy, especially super-resolution microscopy (STED, STORM, SIM) and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). Basically everything which involves polishing mirrors and turning screws. He joins the lab with a Humboldt Foundation Fellowship.
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.
Clinton Huynh
Undergraduate Researcher
Clinton is an incoming second year student at UC Berkeley, pursuing a degree in Bioengineering. He is thinking about concentrating in synthetic and computational biology, but is open to the many different fields of science. In his free time, he enjoy gymming with friends and recently have gotten into cooking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Zeeshan Patel
Volunteer
Zeeshan is a senior at Irvington High School who is passionate about the interdisciplinary connections between computing and physical/life science. At the ABC, he has been working on developing deep learning tools for 3D cell membrane segmentation. Zeeshan also has interests in entrepreneurship and finance. When he’s not coding, you can find him playing basketball at the park or biking with his friends.
Benjamin Purnell
Undergraduate Researcher
Benjamin is a junior majoring in molecular and cellular biology at UC Berkeley with an emphasis in immunology. He is a former CIRM bridges to stem cell research intern with prior experience researching inflammatory bowel disease at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Outside of the lab and classroom he enjoys running, skimboarding and making music.
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.
Cyna Shirazinejad
Graduate Researcher
Cyna studied Physics & Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University before deciding to jump ship and start exploring the final frontier of physics: cellular biology. He is a PhD student in the Berkeley Biophysics program and is jointly advised by David Drubin in MCB, When Cyna isn’t busy building microscopes, he spends his time being a nurturing parent to his stem cell culture and building computational models to make sense of large bioimaging datasets.
Aaron Sun
Undergraduate Researcher
Aaron is a 3rd year student in the school of Letters and Sciences who is interested in Physics and CS and is still deciding which avenue of science to devote his life to. In his spare time, Aaron enjoys solving Rubik’s cubes while blindfolded and indoor rock climbing.
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
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
Listed by start date:
Valetina Ferro – Postdoc 2019-20, Experimental Physicist & Research Scientist, EOSpace Inc.
Vale (short for Valentina) is an experimental physicist with a passion for light-matter interactions. BSc in Physics at the University of Catania (Italy), MSc with majors in photonics, semiconductors and materials sciences from the University of Catania with a 1-year Volunteership in imec (Belgium), PhD program in biophysics from the University of Dundee, Scottland funded by a Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions Scholarship. 
Adam Zimmerman – 2019 – 2021 Computational Staff and Volunteer, Graduate Student University of San Francisco
Yui (Rice) Ching Siu – Fall 2020 Study-Abroad Undergraduate Researcher, Undergraduate The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Aseem Doriwala – 2019 – 2020 Volunteer, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Shawn Hua – Summer 2020 Computational Volunteer, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Nathanael Harrison – 2019 – 2020 Volunteer, Undergraduate UC Berkeley
Ira Horecka – 2020 Computational Volunteer, Graduate Student University of Toronto
Fanliu (Jason) Kong – Summer 2019 Volunteer, Undergraduate Cornell Univeristy
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