Multi-dimensional imaging
Biology operates across scales. Molecular machines make decisions in milliseconds. Immune systems adapt over decades. Understanding how these processes connect — and how they go wrong in disease — requires seeing them as they unfold, in real time, at every level of detail.
Today’s imaging forces tradeoffs: resolution or field of view, speed or depth, one modality or another. We’re building integrated platforms that eliminate these tradeoffs, combining frontier imaging with AI to capture biological systems as they actually work.
Our goal is to make AI-powered, multidimensional imaging a foundational technology for biology — one that lets researchers see how living systems function, forecast what they’ll do next, and ultimately redirect cellular behavior to prevent or cure disease.
Our focus areas:
- Bioforecasting — AI-powered tools that automate the path from imaging to insight, creating the computational foundation for predictive biology and autonomous discovery.
- Dynamic structural cell biology — High-resolution structural snapshots at critical moments, building the molecular-scale foundation for understanding changes in cellular function at a molecular level.
- Cell × State — Scalable technologies to decode how cells translate inputs into outputs, enabling prediction and control of cellular behavior across biological contexts.
- Developmental systems mapping — Comprehensive mapping of vertebrate development, linking cellular dynamics and lineage to multi-omic data.
- Immunological surveillance — Profile immune responses across scales and lifespans, from cellular interactions to organism-wide dynamics through development, aging, and disease.
“With AI, computer tools, mechanistic models, and theory, we’ve got the ability to do in biology what applied physics, theoretical physics, and engineering did so fruitfully a century ago – building and testing large-scale approaches to hard problems in the field. We now have the ability to extract truly meaningful knowledge from a wealth of biological data.” — Scott Fraser, president of imaging
News
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Scott Fraser: 5 ways imaging and AI are capturing biology across billion-fold scales
Dynamic imaging technologies are allowing us to watch biology unfold in real time and with unprecedented detail, shares Biohub’s president of imaging.
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Axios: Zuckerberg and Chan bet AI can cure all disease
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Associated Press: Zuckerberg, Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology to curb disease
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Research
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Remoscope: a label-free imaging cytometer for malaria diagnostics
Paul M. Lebel, Ilakkiyan Jeyakumar, Michelle W.L. Khoo, et al. (2024) | medRxiv
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A data portal for providing standardized annotations for cryo-electron tomography
Utz Ermel, Anchi Cheng, Jun Xi Ni et al. (2024) | Nature Methods
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Mechanism of DNA Entrapment by the MukBEF SMC Complex and Its Inhibition by a Viral DNA Mimic
Frank Bürmann, Bryony Clifton, Sophie Koekemoer et al. (2024) | bioRxiv
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Team leaders
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David Agard
Founding Scientific Director, Imaging
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Carolina Arias
Research Director, Virus-Host Interactions
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Keir Balla
Senior Group Leader, Immune Surveillance
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Bridget Carragher
Founding Technical Director, Imaging
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Anchi Cheng
Group Leader, CryoET Data Collection
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Josh Elias
Platform Director, Mass Spectrometry
Investigator program
Our investigator and residency programs support research and collaborations by some of the best minds in science, medicine, engineering and technology.
Meet our investigators
Join us in our mission
We are a collaborative community of scientists, engineers, and AI and machine learning experts from across multiple fields who are passionate about tackling complex challenges and share a unified vision of a world without disease.
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