The Stanford Photonics Research Center

September 16, 2008

Biological processes occur on spatiotemporal scales spanning many orders of magnitude. Greater understanding of these processes therefore demands improvements in the tools used in their study. I will first describe our recently developed pulse splitter, which permits faster two photon imaging with reduced photobleaching and photodamage. I will then describe our ongoing efforts to apply adaptive optics to increase the spatial resolution and depth of penetration during in vivo imaging of the mouse neocortex. 
 
Na Ji studied chemical physics as an undergraduate student in the University of Science and Technology of China, where she won the Guo Moruo Fellowship.  She received her Ph.D. degree in chemistry, specializing in sum frequency generation in the lab of Prof. Yuen-Ron Shen at the University of California, Berkeley.  Since 2006, she has been working with Dr. Eric Betzig at the Janelia Farm Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where her research focuses on improving the speed and resolution of in vivo brain imaging, and applying the resulting techniques to outstanding problems in neurobiology.