Cryo-electron Tomography

Prof. Dorit Hanein received her doctoral degree from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. She completed her training as a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University under the mentorship of Professor David DeRosier, a pioneer in three-dimensional image reconstruction techniques via electron microscopy. Prof. Hanein is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and serves as a PEW Innovation Fund Investigator. She holds a “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” (HDR, Accreditation to Direct Research) from Sorbonne University, France.

Prof. Hanein’s research lies at the intersection of structural biology, cell biology, systems biology, and engineering science. Her work focuses on the quantitative integration of high-resolution imaging technologies, designed to visualize the molecular architecture and dynamic conformational landscape of biological nanomachines in three dimensions within their native environments and under mechanical perturbations. She has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the cytoskeleton and macromolecular assemblies, advanced the field of quantitative electron microscopy, pioneered the use of correlative light and cryo-electron microscopic tomography and functionalized substrates. The strategic employment of these techniques has revolutionized our ability to define the building blocks of large dynamic macromolecular complexes in three dimensions with high fidelity and high resolution, while contextualizing their function within whole cells.