Jian-Young Wu
Georgetown University, DC·Neuroscience
Understanding how the brain works requires watching many neurons fire at the same time. One common way to do this is calcium imaging.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
Physics
- Topics
calcium imaging
GCaMP6f
neuronal ensembles
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Test whether patterned pinhole illuminators, built from glass-disk pinhole patterns or microlens arrays, reduce background light and strengthen calcium signals in brain tissue densely labeled with the calcium sensor GCaMP6f.
- Develop a fiber-optic pinhole illuminator in which each fiber of a coherent bundle is lit by a switchable 470 nm LED, scanning the field electronically with no moving parts.
- Build the device by modifying an existing brightfield fluorescence microscope with ordinary CMOS cameras and LED light, aiming to record hundreds of neurons at under one-tenth the cost of a two-photon microscope.
More about the research
Neurons carry a fluorescent sensor that glows brighter when calcium rises inside the cell, which happens when the cell is active. Microscopes that can record hundreds of neurons this way, such as two-photon, confocal and light-sheet instruments, are expensive. Simpler widefield microscopes cost less, but out-of-focus background light drowns out the signal from individual cells.
Why it matters
A microscope add-on that records hundreds of neurons for a fraction of the cost of two-photon systems could put large-scale brain activity imaging within reach of many more laboratories. Because the design is open-source and can be added to existing microscopes, it could widen access to studies of how groups of neurons work together.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chris Xu
Cornell University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Raise the three-photon fluorescence signal by about 10,000-fold through new lasers and imaging techniques, to image mouse brain activity with sub-cellular resolution at about 2 mm depth.
Suhasa Kodandaramaiah
University of Minnesota, MN·Biomedical Engineering
Design and build a miniaturized micro-camera array microscope (MCAM) that fits a clear polymer skull implant and images 24 mm² of cerebellar cortex at cellular resolution, refined in head-fixed mice.
David Tank
Princeton University, NJ·Neuroscience
Identify which task features (active navigation, passive navigation, or visual stimulation) produce sequential neural activity, by recording from relevant mouse brain regions during tasks that isolate each feature.
The school
Georgetown University: 14 labs on PI Pages, $377M a year on research, 206 research doctorates a year.
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