Lu Wei

Lu Wei is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and an Investigator at the Heritage Medical Research Institute. She holds a B.S. from Nanjing University (2010) and a Ph.D. from Columbia University (2015), joining Caltech in 2018.

• Research Areas: Optical spectroscopy, Biophysics, Bio-imaging, Chemical probe development
• Education: B.S. Nanjing University (2010), Ph.D. Columbia (2015)

Research Interests include next-generation optical imaging techniques based on nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy for live-cell dynamics. Her work spans super-resolution label-free imaging, quantitative polyQ aggregate analysis in Huntington’s disease, Raman-guided pharmacometabolomics for melanoma, and environmental sensing in subcellular systems.

Recent Publications highlight trends in vibrational thermometry (2025), high-speed bond-selective imaging (2025), and photochromic Raman microscopy (2023), with applications from single-molecule to cellular biology.

• 2024 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award
• 2023 NSF CAREER Award
• 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship
• 2021 Scialog Fellow

Students: 5 Ph.D. graduates (Dr. Jiajun Du, Dr. Kun Miao, Dr. Xiaotian Bi, Dr. Li-En Lin, Dr. Dongkwan Lee) and current advisees including Adrian, RJ, Phil, Yulu, Berea, and Kwan. The lab has received grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NSF, Curci Foundation, and Eli Lilly.

Labs & Collaborations: The Wei Lab at Caltech collaborates with Karthikeyan (metabolic imaging) and Mazmanian Labs (microbiome studies). They host interdisciplinary teams in physical chemistry and chemical biology.