Na Ji PhD

Na Ji received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 working in non-linear optics, and then moved into optical microscopy because she wanted to understand the brain. With Eric Betzig (2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), she began the development of a two-photon imaging system to overcome the tissue sample aberration that plagues neurobiologists. After completing her post-doc at the Janelia Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ji started a lab there to develop new optical microscopy techniques for brain research, and to apply her methods—in particular, to understand neural circuits in the visual cortex and superior colliculus. In 2017 her lab moved to U.C. Berkeley, where she now serves as an Associate Professor for the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and also in the departments of Physics and Molecular Cell Biology.