Lingyan Shi

Lingyan Shi is an Associate Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, with a faculty affiliation in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She leads the Shi Lab, pioneering multimodal super-resolution microscopy integrating stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), multiphoton fluorescence (MPF), and second harmonic generation (SHG) to study metabolic dynamics in aging, diseases, and immunology.

Her research highlights include discovering the 'Golden Window' for deep-tissue imaging (1550–1870 nm), developing bioorthogonal metabolic imaging platforms (DO-SRS and STRIDE), and creating the Adam optimization-based Pointillism Deconvolution (A-PoD) for super-resolution SRS microscopy. She holds six patents and has received prestigious awards including the Blavatnik Regional Award (2018), Sloan Research Fellowship (2023), and Advancing Bioimaging Scialog Fellowships (2021–2023).

Research Focus: Shi’s lab focuses on visualizing in situ metabolic activities in tissues, particularly lipid, protein, and nucleic acid synthesis. Applications target neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s), diabetes, cancer, and aging processes. Techniques emphasize sub-cellular resolution and real-time metabolic tracking.

Publications & Impact: Over 50 peer-reviewed articles (2023–2025) explore topics like anti-aging effects of metformin, metabolic imaging in Drosophila brains, and exosome-based cancer classification. Her work bridges biosensor engineering, algorithm development, and clinical diagnostics.

Awards & Mentorship: Recognized for mentoring underrepresented students and developing curricula in bioengineering. Teaches core courses in bioengineering at UCSD and actively promotes diversity in STEM.