Suckjoon Jun [Professor of Physics ] [email] [office UH6250] [lab UH6249] [Google scholar]

I originally trained as a theorist during my Ph.D. In 2007, I crossed the boundary into experimental quantitative biology and started a wet lab as a Bauer Fellow (junior group leader) at Harvard University. I moved the lab to UC San Diego in 2012 as part of the qBio initiative. My research seeks fundamental principles that explain how living cells grow, organize themselves, and reproduce quantitatively. Along the way, my lab invented the mother machine, discovered the adder principle of cell-size control, and explained the mechanisms underlying it. Our work has been recognized with an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, a Pew Scholars Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the Lattimer Award, the Biophysical Society’s Michael and Kate Bárány Award, a Pew Innovation Fund award, and a Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship. After nearly two decades of mentoring students and postdoctoral researchers, I have come to appreciate the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”