Michelle Wang named HHMI Scholar

Michelle Wang, a former Block-lab postdoc and optical trapping aficionado, has been named an HHMI scholar. The Wang lab works very much along the same lines as the Block lab, using optical trapping to study DNA interactions with various proteins, as well as fundamental DNA properties. They also have published some interesting work on an optical torque wrench, an instrument for applying and measuring torques to optically anisotropic particles using polarized light, in a manner similar to the way magnetic tweezers can be used with paramagnetic particles.

Also, the word coming down the grapevine is that Ahmet Yildiz has accepted a faculty position at Berkeley, though it does not appear to have been officially announced yet...more on this breaking news as it arrives!