Lab news

Welcome Jayden Hu, who joins the group for summer high school research through the UChicago ASM STEM Lab Internship!

Welcome Anya Narayan, who joins the group for summer undergraduate research, supported by the Katen Scholars Program!

Welcome Evan Ying, from the MSTP program, to the lab as a rotation student!

Li successfully defended her thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Wen!

Nurai was selected as a 2025–2026 Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar by the UChicago College. Congratulations, Nurai!

Congratulations to Jingxuan on passing his chemistry candidacy exam!

Welcome Yubangguo Nie, from the Chemistry program, to the lab as a rotation student.

Our lab was awarded an R01 from the National Human Genome Research Institute. Congrats to everyone, and thank you NIH!

Xinqi presented a poster of his work at the RNA Society meeting.

Congratulations to Jingyi on her 2025 BIV Young Faculty Award from the Biophysical Society.

Jingxuan Jia, a first-year graduate student in the Chemistry program, joined the lab. Welcome, Jingxuan!

Welcome David Gonia and Marek Sobczyk, both from the BMB program, to the lab as rotation students.

Nurai was selected as a 2024–2025 Quad Faculty Research Grant recipient for undergraduate research. Congratulations, Nurai!

Jingyi was selected as a Kavli Fellow by the Kavli Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, and invited to the 34th Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium. Congratulations, Jingyi!

Xinqi gave a talk at the Yen Fellow symposium.

A new undergraduate student, Nurai El Ashry, joined the lab. Welcome, Nurai!

Sneha, Jinjun, Li and Jingyi all presented at the BMB departmental retreat.

Our lab was awarded an MPI grant from NSF to study nuclear speckles with Prof. Oded Regev (NYU)!

Anna Perez joined the lab for summer research, supported by the Katen Scholars Program. Welcome, Anna!

Xinqi and Sneha were both selected for the Yen Fellowship from the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. Thanks to Yen and IBD for the generous support, and congratulations to Xinqi and Sneha!

Alyssa and Sneha decorated Jingyi's office door for the first BMB holiday door decoration competition, and the Fei Lab won first prize! Wonderful job, Alyssa and Sneha!

Sneha gave a talk at the Chicagoland RNA Club.

Jingyi was featured in this month's RNA Society Member Spotlight!

Dr. Xinqi Fan joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow, co-mentored by Dr. Chuan He. Welcome, Xinqi!

Andrew Huang joined the lab for summer research, supported by the Katen Scholars Program. Welcome, Andrew!

Li Wen, a PhD candidate from the Physics Department, joined the lab. Welcome, Li!

Glingna Wang joined the lab for undergraduate research, supported by the Quad Faculty Research Grant. Welcome, Glingna!

Congratulations to Jeff on defending his thesis! The lab celebrated at Tang's Garden, but we forgot to take pictures…

Yunzheng Liu, a master's student in the PSD master's program majoring in physics, joined the lab. Welcome, Yunzheng!

Matt's study on the kinetic determinants of sRNA regulation hierarchy was published in Cell Reports. Congratulations, Matt!

Dr. Sneha Paul joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome, Sneha!

Welcome to our new Research Professional, Dr. Zunwu Zhou!

Our lab was awarded an NIH R21, together with Dr. Weixin Tang (UChicago Chemistry), to develop a new method for spatially resolved lineage tracing!

Congratulations to Matt on defending his thesis! Our first lab party since the pandemic.

Welcome to our new Research Specialist, Alyssa Guzman!

Seongjin's study on the Hfq protein in live bacterial cells was published in eLife. Congratulations, Seongjin!

Welcome to our new postdoc, Dr. Jinjun Wu!

Magda's method for site-specific quantification of m⁶A fraction was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Congratulations, Magda!

Seongjin's new immunostaining method was published in Biochemistry. Congratulations, Seongjin!

Amine was selected as a Yen Postdoctoral Fellow, supported by IBD. Congratulations, Amine!

Seongjin and Jeff presented posters at the Chicago Biophysics Networking Symposium.

Matt gave a talk at the Biophysics retreat.

Our lab participated in the summer school at the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells, UIUC. Seongjin and Matt were teaching assistants, and Jingyi gave a lecture.

Two students, Jiawei Ding (Tsinghua University) and Yu Fu (Peking University), joined us through the international undergraduate summer research program. Welcome, Jiawei and Yu!

Seongjin, Jeff and Matt presented posters at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society.

Seongjin gave a talk at the RNA Club.

Dr. Amine Driouchi joined the lab as a postdoc. Welcome, Amine!

Jeff gave a talk at the RNA Club.

Seongjin described our "3-in-1" microscope design in a manuscript in JoVE. Check it out if you are interested in building one.

Jeff's single-molecule FRET study on the T-box riboswitch was published in eLife, a great collaboration with Prof. Alfonso Mondragón's group (Northwestern University). See the eLife Digest to find out how the T-box recognizes its tRNA ligand!

Our lab participated in the summer school at the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells, UIUC. Seongjin and Matt were teaching assistants, and Jingyi gave a lecture.

Congratulations to Jingyi on being selected as a Scialog Fellow for Chemical Machinery of the Cell.

Congratulations to Shriram on being selected as both an Amgen Scholar and an Astronaut Scholar!

Matt's new image analysis tool was published in Biochemistry. With this tool, you can easily segment bacterial cells in 2D or 3D from fluorescence or DIC images. Email us if you are interested in trying it out!

Jingyi was selected as a recipient of the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2017. Congratulations, Jingyi!

Our collaboration with Dr. Bryan Dickinson (UChicago) and Dr. Engin Özkan (UChicago) was funded by NIH.

Joanna joined the lab as a visiting scholar in the 2017–18 Visiting Research Graduate Traineeship Program, from the University of Technology in Wrocław, Poland. Welcome, Joanna!

Our lab participated in the summer school at the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells, UIUC. Seongjin, Jeff and Matt were teaching assistants, and Jingyi gave a lecture.

Our collaboration with Dr. Cari Vanderpool (UIUC) and Dr. Eric Massé (University of Sherbrooke) was funded by NIH.

Jingyi was named a Searle Scholar for 2017. Congratulations, Jingyi!

Shriram was accepted into the 2017 UCIHP Katen Scholars Program. Congratulations, Shriram!

Welcome Soo Ji Kim for her rotation in the lab!

Congratulations to Jingyi and Dr. Alfonso Mondragón (Northwestern University) on winning the Catalyst Award from the Chicago Biomedical Consortium!

Congratulations to Jeff, Eric and Matt on passing their qualifying exams!

Jeff and Matt both officially joined the lab!

Shriram Chennakesavalu joined the lab for summer research. Welcome, Shriram!

Our lab participated in the summer school at the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells, UIUC. Seongjin and Eric were teaching assistants and trained students in the super-resolution RNA imaging module.

Eric officially joined the lab after a two-month rotation!

Magda Bujnowska, a second-year undergraduate student in chemistry, joined the lab as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome, Magda!

Emily Heideman joined the lab as a research technician. Welcome, Emily!

Jeff Zhang and Matt Reyer, both first-year graduate students in the Biophysics program, started their rotations. Welcome, Jeff and Matt!

Carter Stout, a first-year undergraduate student in chemistry, joined the lab as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome, Carter!

Eric McLean and Cody Hernandez, both first-year graduate students in the CMB program, started their rotations. Welcome, Eric and Cody!

Jingyi started her lab at UChicago, and Dr. Seongjin Park joined as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome, Seongjin!