He received a B.S. degree in physics at
Seoul National University in 1990, and joined the physics department at
University of California, Berkeley where he began to study
atomic physics in the lab of
Raymond Jeanloz in Berkeley's geophysics department.[10] He worked on a project to place
nitrogen and
carbon under very high pressures, with the goal to create a material harder than diamonds. During this time, he had to take a temporary leave of absence from Berkeley to
South Korea for a year to fulfill South Korea's military service requirements. Upon his return, Ha changed his research interests and joined the lab of Daniel Chemla, a prominent scientist known for his studies of quantum optics of semiconductors. Soon after joining Chemla's group, Ha began working closely with scientist Shimon Weiss to build a
near-field scanning optical microscope, a machine equipped with a small aperture and a short-pulse laser able to measure a material's properties with high time and spatial resolution.[11] He subsequently received both his M.A. and Ph.D. at Berkeley and completed postdoctoral research at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and
Stanford University with advisor
Steven Chu.[12] He was appointed to the faculty of the
University of Illinois in 2000 as assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Center for
Biophysics and
Computational Biology.[13][14]
In 2021, Ha was elected President-elect of the Biophysical Society. He will assume the office of President-elect in 2022 and begin his term as President in 2023.[20]
Honors and Distinctions
Ha has been recognized internationally for his pioneering work in biophysics. In 2001, he was named a
Searle Scholar, recognizing him as an "exceptional young scientist."[4] The following year, he received a
National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Fluorescence Young Investigator Award from the
Biophysical Society. In 2003, he was named a
Cottrell Scholar for his "high-quality research" and "dedication to the task of teaching undergraduates"[21] and an
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow for "outstanding promise."[22][23] In 2005, Ha was elected to the
American Physical Society and was named an Investigator of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the scientific disciplines of
Biophysics and
Structural Biology, a position he continues to hold today.[24] He received the
Michael and Kate Bárány Award of the
Biophysical Society in 2007 for "his development and application of novel single molecule physical methods and techniques, and for his ground-breaking discoveries in the single molecule research field."[25] In 2011, Ha won the
Ho-Am Prize in Science for his "pioneering application of fluorescence resonance energy transfer techniques to reveal the behavior and physical characteristics of single biomolecules"; this prize is "widely regarded as the Korean equivalent of the Nobel Prizes."[26] He was named the 2012 Scientist of the Year by the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) and Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST).[27]
Taekjip Ha uses sophisticated physical techniques to manipulate and visualize the movements of single molecules[30][31][32] to understand basic biological processes involving DNA[33] and other molecules.[31][34] He applies the use of single-molecule techniques[35][36] and has pioneered several techniques[37][38][39] in studying biological systems usually supported by nano-mechanical tools such as optical tweezers.[40][41] Combining biophysical manipulation techniques and ultrasensitive fluorescence imaging to manipulate protein, RNA, and DNA molecules and observe their responses, Ha tests various protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions at extremely high spatial and temporal resolutions.[42][43]
Publications
Ha has more than 37,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 103.[44]
2003 with A Yildiz, JN Forkey, SA McKinney, YE Goldman, PR Selvin, Myosin V walks hand-over-hand: single fluorophore imaging with 1.5-nm localization, in: Science. Vol. 300, nº 5628; 2061-2065.
2008 with R Roy, S Hohng, A practical guide to single-molecule FRET, in: Nature Methods. Vol. 5, nº 6; 507-516.
1996 with T Enderle, DF Ogletree, DS Chemla, PR Selvin, S Weiss, Probing the interaction between two single molecules: fluorescence resonance energy transfer between a single donor and a single acceptor, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 93, nº 13; 6264-6268.
2010 with C Grashoff, BD Hoffman, MD Brenner, R Zhou, M Parsons, MT Yang, et al, Measuring mechanical tension across vinculin reveals regulation of focal adhesion dynamics, in: Nature. Vol. 466, nº 7303; 263-266.
2000 with X Zhuang, LE Bartley, HP Babcock, R Russell, D Herschlag, S Chu, A single-molecule study of RNA catalysis and folding, in: Science. Vol. 288, nº 5473; 2048-2051.
2008 with C Joo, H Balci, Y Ishitsuka, C Buranachai, Advances in single-molecule fluorescence methods for molecular biology, in: Annual Review of Biochemistry. Vol. 77; 51-76.