Chinese-American biochemist and academic
Lulu Qian is a Chinese-American biochemist who is a professor at the California Institute of Technology. Her research uses DNA-like molecules to build artificial machines.
Early life and education
Qian is from China. She completed her bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing.[1] Qian moved to Shanghai for her doctoral research, where she worked at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on biochemistry.[2] She then moved to the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow.[3] At Caltech, she worked alongside Erik Winfree on biochemical circuits. She used a reversible strand displacement process to create a simple DNA-based building block for a biochemical logic circuit.[4]
Research and career
Qian joined the faculty at Caltech in 2013. She was promoted to professor in 2019.[5] Her research considers molecular robotics and the self-assembly of nanostructures from DNA. These molecular robots can explore biologically relevant surfaces at the nanoscale, picking up molecules and transporting them to specific locations.[6] In 2011, she created the world's largest DNA circuit, which included over seventy DNA molecules.[7]
Qian has also created complex DNA origami.[8] She created two-dimensional images from DNA origami tiles.[8] She used DNA to create an artificial neural network.[9] The network consisted of a DNA gate architecture that can be scaled up into multi-layer circuits.[9][10]
Awards and honors
- 2019 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in nanotechnology[11]
- 2023 Caltech Richard P. Feynman Prize for excellence in teaching[12]
Selected publications
References
