Marker Lectures in the Chemical Sciences Scheduled for 24 to 26 April

6 April 2006—Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Chemical Sciences from 24 to 26 April 2006 at the Penn State University Park campus. The series begins with a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "Ever-Fluctuating Enzymes: Lessons from Single Molecule Studies," at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, 24 April, in the Berg Auditorium, 100 Life Sciences Building. Xie also will give two more specialized lectures as part of this series, including a lecture titled "Probing Gene Expression in Live Cells: One Molecule at a Time," at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 April, in 102 Chemistry Building. He also will present a lecture titled "Visualizing the Invisibles: CARS Microscopy for Biomedicine," at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 26 April, in 102 Chemistry Building. These free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Xie and his research group have made many advances in room-temperature single-molecule spectroscopy. His group pioneered the use of coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy-a sensitive detection method that uses molecular-vibration spectra to generate contrast-to provide detailed images of small, physiologically important molecules in live cells. His current research interests are the study of conformational and chemical dynamics of biomolecules using single-molecule spectroscopy; the study of the biochemical activities of macromolecules in living cells, particularly as related to gene expression; and the development of new techniques for microscopic cellular imaging.

Xie is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Biophysical Society. His research accomplishments have been recognized with a Director's Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health in 2004, a Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences from the Tel Aviv University in Israel in 2003, and a Coblentz Award at the 1996 International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy. He has served on the editorial boards of many journals, including Accounts of Chemical Research, the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, the Journal of Microscopy, and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He also has served on several advisory boards for academic institutions, industries, and government agencies.

Xie earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry at Peking University in China in 1984 and his doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of California at San Diego in 1990. After a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Chicago, he became a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he rose to the position of Chief Scientist for the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in 1995. In 1999, he was appointed a full professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics.

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