Shimon Weiss

Shimon Weiss received his PhD from the Technion in Electrical Engineering in 1989. After a one year post doctorate at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked on ultrafast phenomena in semiconducting devices, he joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist in 1990, where he continued to work on solid state spectroscopy. In 1994 he re-directed his interest to single molecule biophysics. In 2001 he joined the UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Physiology departments. In 2016 he also joined the Physics department at Bar Ilan University, Israel (part time).

The Weiss lab has been working on ultrasensitive single molecule spectroscopy methods for over two decades. We were the first to introduce the single molecule FRET method and together with the Alivisatos group the first to introduce quantum dots for biological imaging. The Weiss lab has also developed a variety of single molecule spectroscopy methods, including numerous novel detectors for advanced imaging and spectroscopy, a superresolution imaging method (SOFI), novel optical imaging tools for single cell physiology, and single nanoparticle voltage sensors for probing neural networks.

Dr. Weiss has published 183 peer-reviewed papers, and holds 32 issued and 35 published patents. He was awarded the Humboldt Research Award, the Rank Prize in opto-electronics, and the Michael and Kate Barany Biophysical Society Award. He holds the Dean Willard Chair in Chemistry and Biochemistry and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Jianqing (Jack) Li
Jack received his PhD in 2003 from the University of Arkansas. He enjoys research on quantum dots chemistry. 

Xavier Michalet

Arkaprabha Nishachor Basu
Arka did his Bachelors from Presidency College, University of Calcutta in India and his Masters from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay). He is interested in understanding the biophysics of cancer migration. His research involves both cancer and pre-cancer cell lines derived from humans. He looks at their actin dynamics as well as the dynamics of stress fiber related proteins using microscopy and quantifies these properties using computational tools.

Yuting Miao
Earned her undergraduate degree in Materials Science at Nanjing University of Science & Technology. She is currently working on method development for visualizing nano-scale plasmonic fields. In her spare time, Yuting likes reading, hiking, and rock climbing.

Maya Segal
Received her B.S. in Chemical Biology from UC Berkeley in 2016. Maya is interested in fluorescence spectroscopy for research on transcription initiation by bacterial and human RNA polymerases. Outside of the lab she enjoys yoga, gardening, and hiking.

Yazan Alhadid
With a background in biochemistry and structural biology, Yazan joined the Weiss lab as a graduate student to use fluorescence-based single-molecule approaches to study different steps in E. coli RNA polymerase transcription and to develop similar single-molecule assays to study the reconstituted human RNA polymerase II (Pol II) system.  Currently, as a postdoc, Yazan is continuing his Ph. D. work to use single-molecule assays to characterize the structural dynamics of Sigma-70 in late initiation, to study the role of macromolecular crowders on Pol II transcription and of Pol II pre-initiation complex components on initiation and re-initiation.

Yung Kuo
Received her Ph.D. in chemistry from UCLA and M.S. in chemistry from National Taiwan University. Yung works on the development of voltage nanosensors for neuron imaging and spectroscopy studies of semiconductor nanoparticles under electric fields.

Neha Chandran
Neha is a second year cognitive science major pursuing a career in the medical field. She is interested in research that will lead to advancements, no matter how small, in medicine and hopes to utilize her contributions to help patients in the future.