6/22/2009
Professor of Physics and HHMI Investigator Taekjip Ha has been selected a University Scholar for 2009/10.
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Taekjip Ha, professor of physics, chemistry, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been named a 2009/10 University Scholar at the University of Illinois. The University Scholars Program is the premier recognition accorded to UI faculty members, who are nominated and selected by their professional peers in a highly competitive process.
Ha applies physical science concepts and experimental techniques to study fundamental questions in molecular biology. He is interested in a number of biological systems—helicases, the Holliday junction and its associated enzymes, hairpin and VS ribozymes, DNA replication machinery, and chromatin remodeling complexes.
The Ha group's main experimental tool is single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy, supported by nanomechanical tools, such as magnetic and optical tweezers, to hold or manipulate biomolecules. The group also uses computational tools extensively, not only to acquire and analyze experimental data, but also to model problems mathematically, to exploit information in genomic databases, and to simulate molecular motions and reactions.
Ha has achieved many "firsts" in experimental biological physics—the first dectection of dipole-dipole interaction (fluorescence resonance energy transfer, or FRET) between two single molecules; the first detection of the rotation of single molecules; the first detection of enzyme conformational changes via single-molecule FRET, and the first observation of the dynamic, ratchet-like movements of single ribosomal molecules in the act of building proteins from benetic blueprints. His most recent work, using single-molecule measurements to understand protein-DNA interactions and enzyme dynamics, has led him to develop novel optical techniques, fluid-handling systems, and surface preparations.
Ha received his bachelor's degree in physics from Seoul National University (1990) and his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley (1996). Prior to joining the Physics faculty at the University of Illinois in 2000, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1997) and a postdoctoral research associate in Steven Chu's laboratory in the Department of Physics at Stanford University (1998–2000). In 2005, Dr. Ha was named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is co-director (with Klaus J. Schulten) of the National Science Foundation-supported Center for the Physics of Living Cells at the University of Illinois.