Champaign, Illinois - February 22, 2024 - ISS was honored to recognize Dr. Taekjip Ha as the 2024 recipient of the Gregorio Weber Award for Excellence in Fluorescence Theory and Applications for his continued contributions to the evolution of the field. Our president, Beniamino Barbieri, presented the award to Dr. Ha on Saturday, February 10th, 2024 at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Dr. Ha is currently the Senior Investigator of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, the George Yancopoulos in Honor of Frederick Alt endowed Chair of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Ha, previously a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, is a world leader in single-molecule biology and intracellular imaging. A physicist by training, Ha uses light to study nature’s nano-machinations. He is known for developing sophisticated physical techniques to manipulate and visualize the movements of single molecules to understand basic biological processes. In particular, he focuses on DNA transactions such as replication, recombination, and chromatin assembly, which may eventually lead to answers in addressing cancer and infectious diseases.

Ha received his BS in Physics at Seoul National University in 1990 and a PhD in Physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996. He joined Johns Hopkins in 2015 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was the Gutgsell Professor of Physics and principal investigator of the Single Molecule Nanometry group. In 2021, Ha was elected President Elect of the Biophysical Society and assumed office in 2022.

He has received many international recognitions and awards for his pioneering work in biophysics including Elected Fellow, National Academy of Science (2021), Elected Fellow, Biophysical Society (2020), Kazuhito Kinosita Award in Single Molecule Biophysics, Biophysical society (2018), Elected Member, National Academy of Sciences (2015), and countless more. Has also has more than 37,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 103.

ISS is honored to recognize Dr. Taekjip Ha as this year’s recipient of the Gregorio Weber Award for Excellence in Fluorescence Theory and Applications for his continued contributions to the evolution of the field.