News! for new publications, see the publications section

2024

  • WEM signs the Mainau Declaration 2024 on Nuclear Weapons during the 2024 Lindau meeting!      
  • Postdoc Dr. William (Memo) Carpenter heads out to his new faculty position in the Department of Chemistry at Ohio State University!   
  • Davis Perez  selected to attend the 2024 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting with Young Scientists!!  

2023 

  • WEM and Peter Dahlberg quoted in Optics and Photonics News Cover Article on Super-Resolution Microscopy !     
  • WEM becomes a Fellow of the Biophysical Society:    For achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in condensed phases and for establishing optical study of single molecules for broad applications in biophysics!
  • Moerner Lab Alum Prof. Adam E. Cohen receives the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences in the field of Chemistry / Physical Chemistry for Biomedical Sciences!!!

2022 

  • Anish Roy becomes Dr. Anish Roy after successfully defending and submitting his dissertation! 
  • WEM conceives and presides over 2022 Welch Foundation Conference in Houston, Texas, on "Molecules and Sculpted Light".   
  •  Our super-resolution study of the coronavirus 299E infecting cells is highlighted in the Stanford Report!
  • Alum Dr. Saumya Saurabh becomes Assistant Professor  of Chemical Biology at NYU Chemistry!
  • Leader selected to be a 2023 Fellow of The Biophysical Society
  • Leader honored by publication of the W. E. (William E.) Moerner Festschrift, The Journal of Physical Chemistry virtual special issue, February 17, 2022 

2021

  • Jiarui Wang, graduate student shared with Lucy Shapiro, becomes Dr. Jiarui Wang, since she has successfully defended and submitted her dissertation!
  • Our very own Dr. Pete Dahlberg begins his new position as Wolfgang Panofsky Fellow at SLAC, a very prestigious honor! Congratulations, Pete, and happy you will continue to collaborate with us!
  • Dannielle McCarthy becomes Dr. Dannielle McCarthy after successfully defending and submitting her dissertation!
  • WEM presents a major seminar noting the value of R35-MIRA support at the NIH/NHGRI for Bethesda researchers, fellows, and students, highlighting three recent advances from the great team we have: TILT-3D, CIASM, and hCoV-229E viral RNA imaging in cells. This presentation was part of the Division of Biophysics, Biomedical Technology, and Computational Biosciences (BBCB)'s seminar series on Avdanced Biomedical Imaging: read about it here: "Hidden Molecules in Caulobacter Bacterium, Coronavirus, and Cells" - Videocast here
  • Finishing his Sigler Fellowship at Princeton, our alum Dr. Quan Wang has landed a position at the NIH: He is now a Stadtman Tenure-track Investigator in the Lab of Chemical Physics, NIDDK - congratualtions!
  • Dr. Leonhard Moeckl and WEM are recognised as part of a team from Stanford and the Francis Crick Institute with a Chemistry Biology Interface Division Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for working to develop chemical precision tools to understand protein glycosylation!
  • Alum Yoav Shechtman has now been awarded tenure at the Technion - congratulations to  Associate Professor Yoav Shechtman, Department of Biomedical Engineering & Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences & Engineering Zuckerman Faculty ScholarTechnion - Israel Institute of Technology
  • Outstanding news that our very own alumna, Associate Professor Julie Biteen-Johnsen, has been promoted to Full Professor at the University of Michigan!!!
  • Biophysics Graduate Student Ashwin Balaji has been selected for a Stanford Graduate Fellowship!
  • Our distinguished alum, Associate Professor Randy Goldsmith, who has been promoted to Full Professor at the University of Wisconsin Chemistry Department! 

2020

  • WEM interviewed for Forbes Russia by the Melnichenko Foundation (in Russian). "The ability to learn is independent of race or gender." Nobel Laureate William Moerner on Equality in Science, Russian Scientists and Myths about GMOs
  • Dr. Leonhard Möckl begins his position as Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany!
  • Dr. Anna-Karin Gustavsson begins her Assistant Professor Position in the Department of Chemistry at Rice University!
  • Petar Petrov becomes Dr. Petar Petrov!
  • Our CIASM (Correlated Imaging by Annotation with Single Molecules) publication is highlighted with a SLAC press story! Congratsto Pete Dahlberg, Annina Sartor, and Jiarui Wang, with Saumya Saurabh from the Shapiro lab and Patrick Mitchell from the Chiu lab! This press story also highlighted the quantum dot paper by Pete and Davis (see below).
  • Congratulations to Dannielle McCarthy, who has received a prestigious DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) Fellowship!
  • Our first publication marrying low temperature single-molecule fluorescence imaging with cryo-electron tomography published online in Angewandte Chemie! Great work Pete Dahlberg and Davis Perez, in collaboration with the Wah Chiu lab!
  • Press story in Laser Focus World on our Neural Network for Phase Retrieval for 3D Point Spread Function imaging of single emitters.

2019

  • Press story in The Stanford Daily on Colin's and Jonathan's study of RsaA S-layer formation! HIghlight at Stanford Chemistry
  • Dannielle McCarthy receives a Poster Award at the Methods and Applications of Fluorescence Conference, MAF2019!
  • Dr. Allison Squires starts as Assistant Professor at the Pritzer School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago!
  • Josh Yoon becomes Dr. Joshua Yoon!
  • WEM describes the power of the ABEL trap to grab single nanoscale objects without optical forces at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting with Young Scientists
  • Congrats to Colin and Josh, who along with Jonathan Herrmann, whose paper (just published in Nature Communications) was highlighted in a press article on the SLAC Web Page!
  • Our famous alumna, Prof. Kallie Willets, gave the Chemistry Department Commencement Address - check out the video!!
  • Camille Bayas becomes Dr. Camille Bayas!
  • Hsiang-Yu Yang becomes Dr. Hsiang-Yu Yang!
  • Annina Sartor was selected as recipient of the Linus Pauling Teaching Award from Stanford Chemistry!
  • Abhijit Lavania wins Second Place Overall in the Poster competition at the Stanford University Photonics Retreat (SUPR)!
  • Dannielle McCarthy wins Best Poster for a 1st or 2nd year graduate student at the Stanford University Photonics Retreat (SUPR)!
  • Petar Petrov is a Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Seed Grants Program Symposium Poster Award Winner!
  • Josh Yoon's image of the 3D surface of the primary cilium lands on the cover of Biophysical Journal!
  • WEM presents Plenary Lecture at IAMS!
  • WEM appears in the list of 109 famous Scouts on the 109'th anniversary of the BSA.

2018

2017

2016

  • Dr. Allison Squires received a travel fellowship from the Helena Anna Henzl-Gabor Young Women in Science Fund for Postdoctoral Scholars!
  • The ABEL trap got a nice highlight on the DOE Office of Science home page, story here.
  • Dr. Anna-Karin Gustavsson receives a Swedish Research Council International Postdoc Fellowship!
  • Adam Backer's paper on super-resolution imaging of positions and orientations of intercalating dyes in DNA is highlighted by news outlets: OSA News Release - Business Wire - CBS8 - Science Daily ...
  • Dr. Quan Wang receives a Lewis-Sigler Fellowship for research at Princeton University!
  • Jiarui Wang receives a Fellowship from the Center for Molecular Analysis and Design at Stanford!
  • Adam Backer receives a Truman Fellowship for postdoctoral study at Sandia!
  • Petar Petrov receives the Best Poster Award, 1st or 2nd Year Category, at the Stanford University Photonics Retreat!
  • WEM receives the Photonics Pioneer Award from Duke Universtiy Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics
  • WEM presents the Wallace H. Coulter Lecture at Pittcon 2016
  • WEM interviewed on News Medical for the Pittcon Coulter Lecture
  • Dr. Allison Squires receives Richard Malkin Award for the Best Postdoc Oral Presentation at the 25th Western Photosynthesis Conference 2016!

2015

2014

2013

  • WEM receives the John Gamble Kirkwood Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Science, from Yale University and the New Haven Section of the American Chemical Society, September 2013
  • Adam Backer receives the 2013 Imaging Systems and Application Best Student Presentation Award at the Imaging and Applied Optics Congress from the Optical Society of America!
  • WEM participates in an AAAS Webinar on fluorophores and super-resolution imaging.
  • Samuel Bockenhauer becomes Dr. Sam Bockenhauer!
  • Lana Lau becomes Dr. Lana Lau!
  • Dr. Gabriela Schlau-Cohen receives ACS PHYS Division Postdoc Award!
  • Our open-source matlab code for analyzing 3D positions of single molecules with the double-helix point spread function microscope (easy-DHPSF) is now live on google code!
  • W. E. Moerner received an Engineering Alumni Achievement Award from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in April 2013. Video Feature. Acceptance Speech.
  • Our recent DH-PSF dipole orientation/correction of mislocalization study was described in the January 2013 "Research Highlights: Methods in Brief" section of Nature Methods!

2012

  • Our recent STED imaging of a centriolar protein article remained at the top of the "Articles Accessed Most Frequently" list in Biophysical Journal for over a month!
  • Our recent single-molecule super-resolution imaging in bacteria by turnover activated localizaiton microscopy (TALM) was highlighted on the Chemical Science blog in October! twice!
  • Our visualization of single voltage-gated sodium channels in cells beyond the diffraction limit was highlighted in Chemistry and Biology Previews Vol 19, pp 790-791 (2012)!
  • Dr. Gabriela Schlau-Cohen receives a Stanford Chemistry Center for Molecular Analysis and Design Postdoctoral Fellowship!
  • W. E. Moerner chosen as winner of the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry for 2013 by the American Chemical Society
  • Yan Jiang becomes Dr. Yan Jiang!
  • Whitney Duim becomes Dr. Whitney Duim!
  • Yao Yue becomes a Master of Science!
  • Matt Lew wins Second Place Poster Award at the Gordon Research Conference on Single-Molecule Approaches to Biology!
  • Lucien Weiss receives a BioX Graduate Student Fellowship!
  • WEM is interviewed by SPIE in January regarding super-resolution imaging and DH-PSF, and in April has a "QnA" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: QnAs with W. E. Moerner
  • Sam Bockenhauer wins both a Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Scholarship and a SPIE Scholarship in Optics and Photonics!
  • W. E. Moerner receives the Pittsburg Spectroscopy Award for 2012!
  • Hsiao-lu Lee wins the Picoquant Young Investigator Award at the SPIE/BiOS Conference!

2011

  • The Moerner Lab reaches 300 publications.
  • Hsiao-lu Denise Lee becomes Dr. Lee!
  • Freshly defended Dr. Mike Thompson attends the prestigious Lindau Symposium with Nobel Laureates!
  • Lana Lau receives a Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) Fellowship from Stanford!
  • Mike Thompson wins Third Prize Poster at the Certer for Probing the Nanoscale (CPN) Workshop!
  • Dr. Randy Goldsmith becomes a new Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin!
  • Lana Lau wins Second Place Poster at the Center for Biological Imaging at Stanford Symposium!
  • Moerner Lab alum Asst. Prof. Julie Biteen wins the Picoquant Young Investigator Award at the SPIE/BiOS Conference!

2010

  • Randy Goldsmith receives a Postdoctoral Research Award of the Physical Chemistry Division of the ACS!
  • Alum Samuel J. Lord receives a Sigal Postdoctoral Fellowship from the ACS!
  • Hsiao-lu Lee receives a Centennial Teaching Assistant Award from the Chemistry Department!
  • Matt Lew receives the Picoquant Young Investigator Award at BioS 2010! (along with Steffen Sahl, future Moerner Lab member)

2009


2008

  • Samuel Lord wins the Sessler Student Leader Award !
  • Julie Biteen wins a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface!
  • Alex Fuerstenberg selected as co-winner of the PhD Thesis Prize in Photochemistry from the European Photochemistry Association
  • W. E. Moerner, along with Allen J. Bard, receives the Wolf Prize in Chemistry!

    • From the Wolf Prize Press Release:

    For the ingenious creation of a new field of science, single molecule spectroscopy and electrochemistry, with impact at the nanoscopic regime, from the molecular and cellular domain to complex material systems. William E. Moerner was the first to perform optical detection and spectroscopy of a single, individual molecule in condensed matter. Allen J. Bard pioneered the development of the scanning electrochemical microscope, allowing high resolution chemical imaging of surfaces and the study of chemical reactions at the nanoscopic regime, applied to biological and catalysis systems. Prior to these discoveries, all chemical experiments essentially measured ensemble averages, over millions to billions of putatively identical copies of the sample molecule, occasionally blurring important information, pertaining to hidden heterogeneity in configuration and intermediate states, in time-domain dynamics. By pushing optical detection to the ultimate limit of one molecule, these scientists changed our understanding of the chemistry and physics of individual molecules. Thus, the strength, persistence, and daring exhibited by Moerner and Bard, in attacking seemingly insoluble problems, led to new experimental and conceptual approaches, currently widely adopted by the scientific community at large.

    Professor William E. Moerner´s ingenious contributions to science have centered around two recurrent themes, which on one hand, address the development of a novel and revolutionary spectroscopic tool, single molecule spectroscopy; and on the other, its applications to problems in physics and analytical chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics. Since their pioneering steps in 1987, Moerner and his team have demonstrated a variety of effects sparking new subfields, including spectral diffusion of individual emitters, lifetime-limited line widths, temperature-induced dephasing, nonlinear saturation of a single molecule, photo-induced Poisson kinetics, blinking and switching of a single emitter, photon anti-bunching and optically-detected magnetic resonance of a single molecular spin. Thus, Moerner’s work trail-blazed a path for the measurement of individual molecules, having broad implications in the investigation of proteins, enzymes, DNA and RNA, and defects in solids or complex materials. Furthermore, this path enables the achievement of super-resolution imaging at the molecular level and endows scientists with the possibility to control the nanoscopic regime and to build molecular-scale devices.

    Comments from Prof. Moerner provided to C&EN:

    "I am elated to receive this recognition, and I am particularly humbled to share the Wolf Prize with Prof. Bard, a giant in the field of electrochemistry.

    In the early days, there was a sense of excitement because spectroscopic measurements in my lab at IBM in 1987 made it clear to me that seeing a single molecule optically would be possible. Nevertheless, our early single-molecule experiments in 1989 were difficult, and the measurements were repeated many times over many months by two techniques to be sure that the spectrum of a single molecule was being observed. Even though the experiments became much easier when Michel Orrit showed that fluorescence excitation would give higher signal-to-noise, it was not clear that single-molecule imaging and spectroscopy would become widespread beyond the low-temperature regime. In the mid-90's, when Eric Betzig showed that room temperature studies over extended times were possible, the range of systems and physical processes that could be explored greatly increased. It is very gratifying that today so many new scientists continue to enter the field to apply single-molecule optical studies to biological systems and even to living cells. I continue to be amazed at what can be learned about DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes, and complex materials simply by using local probes and observing their individual behaviors. Each molecule tells us a story, and our challenge is to interpret what they are saying to obtain a deeper understanding. Even now, new ideas are appearing that take direct advantage of the single emitting molecule as a nanoscale source of light to image far beyond the optical diffraction limit.

    It is important to note that the original work in 1987-1991 would not have been possible without the efforts of my early postdocs, Tom Carter, Lothar Kador, Pat Ambrose, Thomas Basche, and others, and I thankfully acknowledge their efforts in my lab. Indeed, I have been fortunate over the years to have a wonderful team of graduate students, postdocs, and collaborators working with me, from IBM, to ETH, to UCSD, and now at Stanford."

  • Press articles: Stanford Report, Chemical and Engineering News, Chemistry World
2007
  • W. E. Moerner elected to National Academy of Sciences
  • Nick Conley receives a Lieberman Fellowship
  • Adam E. Cohen joins Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Physics faculties at Harvard
  • Anika Kinkhabwala receives a Fellowship from the NSF Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University
2006 2005 - Press Coverage of the ABEL Trap
2003
2002
2001
2000