Michael Lin

Michael Lin, MD PhD, is Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Bioengineering, and by courtesy, Chemical and Systems Biology. Dr. Lin received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard University in biochemistry, then obtained a PhD at Harvard Medical School with Michael Greenberg studying signal transduction pathways controlling cell shape. After completing his MD training at UCLA, Dr. Lin performed postdoctoral research in engineering protein sensors and controllers with Roger Tsien at UCSD.

Dr. Lin is a translational synthetic biologist developing novel technologies to investigate in vivo biology and improve molecular medicines. Among his contributions have been the introduction of viral proteases and protease inhibitors to control protein function in vivo, the invention of cofactor-independent photoswitchable proteins for investigating signaling dynamics and controlling gene editing in vivo, the development of fluorescent voltage-sensing proteins for understanding neuronal circuit signaling in vivo, the discovery of luciferase-based reporters and substrates for non-invasive imaging of biochemical events in vivo, and the engineering of synthetic signaling pathways to rewire cancer signals to therapeutic outputs for tumor eradication in vivo.