Faculty Profiles
Lingyan Shi
Associate Professor, Bioengineering
Faculty-Affiliate, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Multimodal super resolution microscopy, stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), multiphoton fluorescence (MPF), second harmonic generation (SHG), bioorthogonal metabolic imaging, metabolic dynamics in aging, diseases, and immunology.
The Shi group is developing and applying laser scanning multimodal microscopy and spectroscopic technologies -- this includes stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) spectroscopy, multiphoton fluorescence microscopy (MPF), and second harmonic generation (SHG) for studying metabolic dynamics during aging and diseases. The imaging platform is used to map in situ cellular metabolic activities, and visualize the spatial distribution of newly synthesized molecules such as protein, lipid, DNA/RNA, and carbohydrates, which is important for studying aging processes, immunosenescence, as well as diseases including neuronal degeneration, diabetes, and cancer. The Shi group is integrating bioorthogonal labeled SRS microscopy the multimodal microscopy, which can automatically image co-registered SRS/MPF/SHG/DO-SRS for directly imaging complex molecular events in various tissues at sub-cellular scale. These approaches represent powerful tools for disease detection, diagnosis and treatment, as well as for mechanistic understanding of scientific fundamentals.
Capsule Bio:
Lingyan Shi is currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego. She arrived at UC San Diego in 2019, following her postdoctoral training in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. Her lab focuses on developing and applying super resolution multimodal nanoscopy for studying metabolic changes in aging and diseases. Notably, she discovered the "Golden Window" (wavelength from 1550nm to 1870nm) for deep tissue imaging and pioneered the "DO-SRS" metabolic imaging platform, which visualizes metabolic dynamics in cells and tissues with heavy water probing. Her group advanced stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy into a super-resolution multiplex nanoscopy by developing A-PoD, PRM, and SuMMIT-SRS imaging methods, revealing various lipid/protein metabolic changes in organ tissues under physiological and pathological conditions.
Dr. Shi holds 10 awarded patents and 17 pending ones. She won the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientist in 2018; the Hellman Fellowship Award 2021; the “2021 Rising Star Award” by LaserFocusWorld, and the “Rising Star Award” by Nature Light Science & Applications in 2021; the “Advancing Bioimaging Scialog Fellow” by RCSA and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2021, 2022, and 2023; and the Sloan Research Fellow Award in Chemistry 2023. Cellular Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award 2024, International Union of Physiological Sciences IUPS Young Faculty Award 2024, Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award 2025, and elected Senior member of National Academy of Inventors (NAI) 2025.
Selected Publications:
