Na Ji

Na Ji received her B.S. in Chemical Physics from the University of Science & Technology of China in 2000. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, working in the laboratory of Yuen-Ron Shen at the Department of Physics, where she developed new nonlinear optical methods to study the molecular properties of interfacial structures. Having acquired in-depth knowledge in physics and chemistry, she became intrigued by the brain and moved to Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute for her postdoctoral training in 2006. There she worked with Eric Betzig and applied the concept of adaptive optics to optical microscopy, in order to improve the imaging resolution in the brain in vivo. She became a Group Leader at Janelia in 2011 and continued to develop novel imaging methods and apply them to understand neural circuits involved in visual processing. She returned to Berkeley and joined the Physics and Molecular & Cell Biology Departments in 2016, where she is the Luis Alvarez Memorial Chair in Experimental Physics and an associate professor of neurobiology. She is also affiliated with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, as well as the Biophysics, Bioengineering, Vision Sciences, and Applied Science & Technology graduate programs. She is a faculty scientist at the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.