Assistant Professor of Chemistry
email:hawyang@berkeley.edu
office: D46 Hildebrand
phone: 510.643.7344
fax: 510.643.3546
lab: DG30 Hildebrand
student/post doc office: DG30 Hildebrand
Research Interests
Physical Chemistry and Biophysics of Single Biological Macromolecules — Optical single-molecule spectroscopy is developed and utilized to investigate the dynamics of single biological macromolecules.
Whether acting alone or working together, biological macromolecules are capable of performing remarkably different functions. Such functional diversity arises from the structural complexity of biomolecular assemblies. The manner by which the conformation of an assembled complex changes to accomplish its tasks, amid the continual and random influence of solvent and other biological macromolecules, is a key element to our fundamental understanding of the structure-function relationship. Optical single-molecule spectroscopy provides direct microscopic information regarding the distribution of molecular properties, the time sequence of events, and insight to the underlying cause of changes. These advantageous features make optical single-molecule spectroscopy a powerful tool for investigating the complicated biological machinery in molecular detail.
Biography
Haw Yang attended National Taiwan University, where he was a Yuan Lee Scholar, and received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1991. After two years of mandatory military service, he attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked under the supervision of Charles Harris. His Ph.D. thesis concerned the mechanisms and dynamics of photo-induced chemical bond activation by organometallic compounds. In 1999, he went to Harvard University where he worked with Sunney Xie as a postdoctoral research assistant. It was at this time that he first became involved in research related to single-molecule biophysics. In 2002, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the Hellman Family Faculty Award, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.