Thai Truong

Summary Statement of Research Interests

My research interests center around the development of novel imaging technologies and associated quantitative analytical tools, to enable optical interrogation of live cells and cellular processes in their native in-vivo environments. Driven by the motto “seeing is believing”, our Dynamic System Imaging approach aims to capture movies of biological processes, with appropriate resolution and range in 3-dimensional space and time, to yield insights into the inner workings of cells, and how they function together in tissues, organs, and beyond, in both health and disease.

Currently, my research program centers around three concerted, mutually supporting directions. First, we continue to develop our Dynamic System Imaging toolset through refining the imaging modalities of Light Sheet Microscopy (LSM) and Light Field Microscopy (LFM), leveraging their unique advantages to push further the resolution, speed, and depth of biological imaging. Second, working in multi-disciplinary collaborations, we seek to apply our imaging technologies to a diverse set of applications, from following developmental morphogenesis to characterizing the calcium dynamics of pancreatic beta cells.Third, we utilize our bespoke microscopy tools to carry out whole-brain functional imaging of the zebrafish at cellular resolution, to understand how complex behaviors, such as sleep, learning and cognition, arise from the seemingly simple brains of the days-old zebrafish larvae. These rice-grain-sized animals, with semi-transparent brains smaller than a chia seed, yet possessing a wide set of behaviors, present a unique advantageous platform to study how networks of neurons interact to produce neural functions. While rooted in fundamental discovery, our work leverages the conserved neurobiology between zebrafish and humans to provide significant translational potential for addressing sleep disorders, addiction, and broader neurological pathologies.