His group at the Laboratory for Systems Biophotonics is focused on various areas of imaging technology, such as single-molecule biophotonics, super-resolution microscopy, advanced optical and computational microscopy, imaging physics, and biomedical imaging instrumentation and devices as well as imaging microrobotics and machine intelligence. The team strives to advance imaging science and to impact biological and translational research.

Dr. Jia’s work has important applications in a wide range of imaging instruments and techniques, including super-resolution, adaptive optics, light-field, miniaturized, and light-sheet as well as in computational microscopy and endoscopy. These techniques and technologies are designed to address the challenges in (1) mapping functional networks of biological systems from molecules to the whole organ, (2) imaging collective patterns of cellular activities flowing within these networks in freely behaving animals, and (3) integrating and transforming molecular and cellular imaging information into health and disease solutions.

Research Goals 

• Optical systems: Reducing distortion, enhancing resolution, and increasing speed, particularly for imaging technologies that observe single-molecule processes
• Imaging instrumentation: Advancing super-resolution and high-level microscopy technology
• Biomedicine: Innovating imaging techniques and devices for medical applications, including computational microscopy and endoscopy, microrobots, and other biological imaging systems

Activities 

• Microbotics and machine learning: Utilizing machine intelligence to advance biomedical imaging and endoscopic medical tasks
• Imaging physics: Leveraging fundamental physics to improve the extraction of biological information from current imaging techniques 
• Advanced microscopy: Improving light-field, light-sheet, and miniaturized microscopy techniques by innovating new processes

Leadership 

Dr. Jia is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.