Xiaowei Zhuang

Xiaowei Zhuang is the David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Professor of Physics at Harvard University, contributing significantly to Biology through her pioneering work. She is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Zhuang received her B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1991, Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, and conducted postdoctoral training in biophysics at Stanford University from 1997 to 2001. In 2001, she joined Harvard University as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Physics, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005, and to Full Professor in 2006. She joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an Investigator in 2005 and was appointed the David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science in 2014.

Zhuang works in the areas of single-molecule biology and bioimaging, developing imaging techniques to study biological systems quantitatively with single-molecule sensitivity, nanometer-scale resolution, and dynamic imaging capability. Her laboratory applies these methods to explore how proteins and nucleic acids interact, how viruses infect cells, and how neurons compute. She has been recognized with numerous major awards and honors, including induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2024, the Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences in 2023, the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine and the Heinrich Wieland Prize in 2022, the FNIH Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences in 2021, the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science in 2020, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and Pearl Meister Greengard Prize in 2019, the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology in 2015, and the MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. Zhuang is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of the American Physical Society. Key publications include "Molecularly defined and spatially resolved cell atlas of the whole mouse brain" (Nature, 2023), "A high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial atlas of cell types in the whole mouse brain" (Nature, 2023), "A platform for multimodal in vivo pooled genetic screens reveals regulators of liver function" (Cell, 2025), "The membrane skeleton is constitutively remodeled in neurons by calcium signaling" (Science, 2025), and "Three-dimensional single-cell transcriptome imaging of thick tissues" (eLife, 2023). Her contributions have transformed quantitative imaging in biological research.

Professional Email: zhuang@chemistry.harvard.edu