Many advances in biology and medicine are driven by the availability of new diagnostic tools. Our research focuses on the engineering of novel microscopy instrumentation and the application of these new tools to study biomedical problems. The problems tackled in my laboratory range from understanding the structure/function of single proteins, nature's smallest machines, to the devolpment of a new non-invasive optical method for cancer diagnosis. The available research topics in my laboratory can be categorized into molecular, cellular and tissue levels: