庄小威1972—

她也是霍华德·休斯医学研究所的研究员。

早期的生活和教育

父母是大学教授。1991年，她获得中国科学技术大学物理学学士；1997年，获美国加州大学伯克利分校物理学博士。她在1997年至2001年于斯坦福大学从事博士后研究。

事业

从她在哈佛建立自己的实验室开始，她带领研究团队发展超分辨率显微镜技术，识别了个体病毒粒子进入细胞的机理，并用单分子实验从本质上研究核酸与蛋白的相互作用。

庄博士利用自己开发的超灵敏的光学成像技术来监测单一生物分子和联合体在体外或活细胞内的瞬时行为，主要集中在理解病毒如何进入细胞及核酸-蛋白质相互作用。她拍摄到单一枚感冒病毒如何影响一枚细胞，是首次有科学家记录到这过程。

庄小威34岁成为哈佛的化学和物理双学科正教授，HHMI研究员，她是哈佛物理系和化学系少有的双科教授。

5月14日，庄小威受聘中国科大“大师讲席”教授。2012年5月1日，当选为美国国家科学院院士。

奖项

2020: 生物医学比尔切克基金会奖(Vilcek Foundation Prize in Biomedical Science)

• 2019: Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
• 2019: 美国国家科学院科学发现奖
• 2019: 生命科学突破奖
• 2015: 中国科学院外籍院士
• 2013: 美国文理科学院院士
• 2012: 美国国家科学院院士
• 2011: 赛克勒奖
• 2010: 马克斯·德尔布吕克奖
• 2007: 美国化学学会纯化学奖
• 2003: 戴维与露西尔帕卡德基金会
• 2003: 麦克阿瑟奖

Xiaowei Zhuang (simplified Chinese: 庄小威; traditional Chinese: 莊小威; pinyin: Zhuāng Xiǎowēi; born 21 January 1972) is a Chinese-American biophysicist who is the David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Professor of Physics at Harvard University, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is best known for her work in the development of Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), a super-resolution fluorescence microscopy method, and the discoveries of novel cellular structures using STORM. She received a 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing super-resolution imaging techniques that get past the diffraction limits of traditional light microscopes, allowing scientists to visualize small structures within living cells. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019 and was awarded a Vilcek Foundation Prize in Biomedical Science in 2020.

Early life and education

Zhuang's father Zhuang Lixian (庄礼贤) and mother Zhu Renzhi (朱仁芝) are both professors at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

Zhuang graduated from the USTC with a BS in physics in 1991. She obtained her PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and conducted her thesis research under the supervision of Dr. Yuen-Ron Shen. In 1997–2001, she was a Chodorow Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Steven Chu at Stanford University. She started her faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Department of Physics at Harvard University in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2006.

She was named a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator in 2005.

Research

Zhuang's laboratory invented Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), a single-molecule-based super-resolution fluorescence microscopy method. The Zhuang laboratory demonstrated three-dimensional super-resolution imaging with STORM. The Zhuang laboratory also discovered several photoswitchable dye molecules that enabled STORM imaging and demonstrated live-cell STORM imaging.

Using STORM, Zhuang and colleagues have studied a variety of biological systems, ranging from single-cell organisms to complex brain tissues. These studies led to the discovery of novel cellular structures, such as the periodic membrane skeletons in the axons of neurons and provided insights into many other cellular structures.

The Zhuang laboratory invented a single-cell transcriptome imaging method, MERFISH (multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization), which allows numerous RNA species to be imaged and quantified in single cells in their native context. Zhuang and colleagues used single-molecule FRET to study biomolecules and molecular complexes and developed single-virus tracking methods to study virus-cell interactions.