Ambitions of a toolmaker

By Life Sciences Staff

Some of us go through life waiting for inspiration to come to us. Others seem to know early on that they are here to inspire others. Hari Shroff, Ph. D., began his undergraduate studies in bioengineering at the University of Washington when he was just 14 years old, and was only19 when he enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley graduate program in biophysics. He completed his Ph.D. in 2006 at the age of 24, working on what he calls a “smorgasbord” of subjects, including complex courses in physics, engineering, and molecular biology. He spent his postdoctoral years at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus where his research focused on photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), an optical superresolution technique invented by Eric Betzig, Ph. D., and Harald Hess, Ph. D.

Currently the Chief of the High Resolution Optical Imaging Laboratory at National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), Dr. Shroff has continued to develop PALM while expanding his interest in microscopes with high temporal as well as high spatial resolution. One example of the latter is iSPIM, or inverted selective plane illumination microscopy, designed, built, and tested by Shroff and Yicong Wu, Ph. D. in their lab at NIBIB. Scientists using iSPIM can, for the first time, view fluorescently labeled neurons within living worms throughout a complete cycle of embryogenesis.

“It’s humbling to think that with current knowledge and technology, we still know so little about neurodevelopment, about how the brain becomes wired,” says Shroff.

Shroff is now collaborating with Drs. Daniel Colon-Ramos of Yale University, and Zhirong Bao from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, to develop a 4-D neuronal atlas of the worm model, C. elegans. Using fluorescent marker molecules to highlight single cells, Schroff and his collaborators can now watch as individual neurons develop over an eight-hour period within a living worm embryo. See more about this work, including a video, at http://irp.nih.gov/our-research/research-in-action/ambitions-of-a-tool-maker

Shroff won a 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in recognition of his innovative work. Unselfishly, Shroff calls himself a “tool-maker” who revels in others’ discoveries using the technologies he and his collaborators develop.

Hari Shroff is not only an inspiration to others, but finds great satisfaction in being inspired by his peers.