About the Seminar

The Vaughan group develops new chemical tools for high resolution fluorescence microscopy and uses these tools, along with established ones, to understand the organization of biological systems with rich molecular detail. On the tool development side, we are synthesizing new fluorescent probes, creating new methods for tissue expansion and clearing, and developing assays to understand the organization of the genome. On the application side, we have partnered with biologists and pathologists to study the cytoskeleton, the organization of mouse and human kidney, and immune cell development. In my talk, I will discuss our recent work on the development and application of chemical tools for biological imaging.

About the Speaker

Prof. Vaughan grew up in the San Francisco bay area and had an interest in science from an early age. He studied chemistry at Reed College in Portland, OR and then earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at MIT where he worked in the lab of Keith Nelson on applications of adaptive optics to ultrafast spectroscopy. For his postdoctoral research in Xiaowei Zhuang’s lab at Harvard he developed tools for super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and studied virus transport. His current interests include developing new tools to extract molecular detail from intact biological specimens and applying these tools to important biological questions.