Biophysics

Biophysics is an interdisciplinary subject combining physics and biology, and an important branch of life science and physics. With the concept and method of physics, biophysics is to study the structure and function related characteristics of the process of life activities in terms of matter, energy and information exchanges with high temporal and spatial resolution. This discipline is closely related to the study of macromolecules in soft matter condensates, molecular biology of the physical and chemical processes inside and outside the cell, and the complex system theory of multi-component interactions with highly inhomogeneous nonlinearity. It also has important applications in clinical medicine. At present, the research field of biophysics in the department of physics mainly focuses on:

The research related to optical imaging and detection in biomedical application. Specifically, it includes: (1) non-destructive imaging method based on light scattering and its application research. For example: polarized light scattering theory, method and application; (2) single molecule detection and application research. For example, the kinetic process of interaction between biomolecules at the single molecular level, the study of three-dimensional fluorescence in situ hybridization of spatial conformation in chromosome domain, etc. (3) new principles and methods of non-invasive or minimally invasive multidimensional, micro-area, highly sensitive detection and optical imaging and their applications in biomedicine. For example: high speed and high resolution optical coherence tomography, new super-resolution principles and methods, medical endoscopy imaging technology, high speed optical computation of biological information, etc.

Theoretical and computational approaches to understand the complex spatiotemporal behaviors in biology. Specifically, it includes: (1) explore the relationship between fluctuations and biological functions in molecular and cellular levels by using stochastic thermodynamics; (2) modeling molecular machines based on structural data; (3) multi-cellular interactions and motion with computational models.