Jonathan Liu

Jonathan directs the molecular biophotonics lab, which develops custom microscopes and endoscopic imaging devices, along with molecularly targeted contrast agents, for biomedical applications. In particular, the molecular biophotonics lab has developed large-scale and miniature dual-axis confocal microscopes and light-sheet microscopes to enable high-resolution slide-free optical-sectioning of tissues for early cancer detection, improved diagnosis/grading of tumors, and surgical guidance.

The lab is also developing spectral-imaging endoscopes and intraoperative imaging devices, in conjunction with nanoparticle contrast agents, for multiplexed molecular imaging of disease biomarkers. These projects generate large imaging datasets, in which Jonathan’s lab is working with data scientists to develop the computational tools for cloud storage/computing, visualization (2D and 3D), segmentation, and automated interpretation.

Jonathan received degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Princeton (B.S.E., 1999) and Stanford (M.S., 2000 & Ph.D., 2005). He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering (Ginzton Labs) and the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (2005 – 2009), and was later appointed as an instructor within the Stanford University School of Medicine (2009 – 2010).

From 2010 to 2014, Jonathan was an assistant professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at SUNY Stony Brook. In 2014, he was appointed as an assistant professor and then an associate professor (in 2016) in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Washington in Seattle.