Biography
Kyu Young Han received his BS and PhD in Chemistry from Seoul National University, Korea in 2004 and 2010. During his PhD, he worked at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany where he achieved ultimate resolution of optical microscopy using stimulated emission depletion (STED) and ground state depletion (GSD) microscopy, and developed affordable time-gated STED. Since 2011, he has been working as a postdoc researcher at the University of Illinois, focusing on designing new optical tools for biological applications such as studying DNA-protein interactions, RNA imaging in live-cells and revealing nuclear structure in mammalian cells. His patent on STED microscopy was commercialized by Leica Microsystems.
Awards & Honors
- 2020 NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA)
Research Group
We are interested in the development and applications of novel optical tools such as fluorescence nanoscopy (super-resolution imaging) and label-free single molecule imaging to study essential problems in biology and neuroscience.
Research Scientists
Graduate Students
Undergraduate Research Asistants
There are currently no people listed for this position.
Publications
Roy, A (Roy, Arpan) [1] ; Sarver, S (Sarver, Sydney) [1] ; Beights, J (Beights, Jarod) [2] , [3] ; Brennan, S (Brennan, Sean) [2] , [4] ; Rabi, SN (Rabi, Sazid Noor) [1] ; Mohammad, S (Mohammad, Sakib) [5] ; Han, KY (Han, Kyu Young) [6] ; Nilufar, S (Nilufar, Sabrina) [1] ; Chowdhury, F (Chowdhury, Farhan) "Cytoskeletal Prestress Regulates RIG-I-Mediated Innate Immunity" Biophysica, Volume: 5, Issue: 4 2025
Le-Mei Wang, D Pandey, W Zhang, KY Han "Multiplane 2.5D microscopy for high-throughput high-resolution tissue imaging" J. Biomed. Opt. 30, 106502 2025
NC Venkata, J Kim, G Faber, S Misra, A Bektash, P Chaturvedi, GA Hernandez-Gonzalez,J Dophi, M Kanemaki, K.Y. Han, Y Shav-Tal, AS Belmont "Highly active chromosome regions preferentially associate with two perispeckle networks that partition the interchromatin space" bioRxiv (Under review in Cell Reports) 2025
S Hasan, GS Kenath, M Goswami, Xuan Luo, L Yuan, J Huang, Y Lou, AA Karanastasis, H Vijayamohanan, EF Palermo, K.Y. Han, CK Ullal "Volumetric Patterning of Gels via Super Resolved Interference Lithography" ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 17, 43512-43521 2025
J. Kim, G.A. Hernandez-Gonzalez, N.C. Venkata, K.Y. Han & A.S. Belmont "Nonrandom interchromatin trafficking through dynamic multiphase speckle connections
" bioRxiv (Under review in Nature Cell Biology) 2025
C.H. Weng, K.Y. Han "Photobleaching analysis of fluorescent proteins in two-photon microscopy at high repetition rates" Optics Communications, 574, 131059 2025
A. Husain, S. Yerolatsitis, R. Amezcua-Correa, K.Y. Han "Photonic lantern TIRF microscopy for highly efficient, uniform, artifact-free imaging" Optics Express, 32, 37046-37058 2024
L.M. Wang, J. Kim & K.Y. Han "Highly sensitive volumetric single-molecule imaging" Nanophotonics, 13 (20), 3805–3814 2024
G. Lukinavicius, J. Alvelid, R. Gerasimaite, C. Rodilla-Ramirez, V.T. Nguyen, G. Vicidomini, F. Bottanelli, K.Y. Han, I. Testa "Stimulated emission depletion microscopy" Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 4, 56 2024
S. Basu, M. Song, L. Adams, G. Je, S. Guhathakurta, J. Jiang, N. Boparai, W. Dai, F. Cardozo-Pelaez, S.A. Tatulian, K.Y. Han, J. Elliott, J. Baum, D.W. Dicson, P.J. McLean, Y.S. Kim "Transcriptional mutagenesis of a-synuclein caused by DNA oxidation in Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis" Acta Neuropathologica, 146, 685-705 2023
V. Ebrahimi, T. Stephan, J. Kim, P. Carravilla, C. Eggeling, S. Jakobs, K.Y. Han "Deep learning enables fast, gentle STED microscopy
" Communications Biology 6, 674 2023
V. Ebrahimi, J. Tang and K.Y. Han "Incoherent superposition of polychromatic light enables single-shot nondiffracting light-sheet microscopy" Optics Express 29(20), 32691-32699 2021
J. Ren and K.Y. Han "2.5D microscopy with polarization independent SLM for enhanced detection efficiency and aberration correction" Optics Express, 29(17), 27530-27541 2021
J. Ren and K.Y. Han "2.5D microscopy: Fast, high-throughput imaging via volumetric projection for quantitative subcellular analysis" ACS Photonics, 8(3), 933-942 2021
C.H. Weng, J. Tang and K.Y. Han "Optimizing the performance of multiline-scanning confocal microscopy" Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 54(10), A. 105401 2021
Jialei Tang and K.Y. Han "Instantaneous non-diffracting light-sheet generation by controlling spatial coherence" Optics Communications, 474, 126154 2020
Benjamin Croop, J. Tang and K.Y. Han "Single-shot, shadowless total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy via annular fiber bundle" Optics Letters 45(23), 6470-6473 2020
Jialei Tang, Jinhan Ren & K.Y. Han "Fluorescence imaging with tailored light" Nanophotonics, 8(12), 2111–2128 2019
Alumni
PhD
Chun Hung Weng, PhD, Fall 2023
Vahid Ebrahimi, PhD, Summer 2023
Benjamin Croop, PhD, Summer 2021
Jinhan Ren, PhD, Summer 2021
Chenyi Zhang, PhD, Spring 2021
Jialei Tang, PhD, Spring 2020
MS
Chenyi Zhang, MS, Fall 2020
Benjamin Croop, MS, Spring 2019
Jialei Tang, MS, Summer 2018
Ian Khaw, MS, Spring 2018