Autumn Leica Lecture

These are always excellent. This autumn’s lecture will be given by Prof. Tajkip Ha from the Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is entitled
“Single Molecule Biology: One, two, three and four”.
Tuesday 11th October at 5pm
Lecture Theatre 3 in Life Sciences Building with a post lecture reception at 6.15pm in the foyer outside the lecture theatre.

Professor Taekjip Ha received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1996, from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the Physics faculty at the University of Illinois in August 2000, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1997) and a postdoctoral research associate in Steven Chu’s laboratory in the Department of Physics at Stanford University (1998-2000). He was named 2001 Searle scholar. In 2005, Dr. Ha was named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2008, Dr. Ha was selected by the National Science Foundation to receive a grant to establish and co-direct the Center for the Physics of Living Cells at the University of Illinois.
Professor Ha has achieved many “firsts” in experimental biological physics–the first detection of dipole-dipole interaction (fluorescence resonance energy transfer, or FRET) between two single molecules; the first observation of “quantum jumps” of single molecules at room temperature; the first detection of the rotation of single molecules; and the first detection of enzyme conformational changes via single-molecule FRET. His most recent work, using single-molecule measurements to understand protein-DNA interactions and enzyme dynamics, has led him to develop novel optical techniques, fluid-handling systems, and surface preparations.