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Yung-Ya Lin

 Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

 Assistant Professor

 

 • Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2001

    Princeton University, Advisor: Prof. Warren S. Warren

 • Ph.D., 1998, University of California at Berkeley 

    Advisor: Prof. Alex Pines

 • B.S. and M.S., 1993, National Taiwan University

    Advisor: Prof. Lian-Pin Hwang

 

 • Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, 2005

 • Hanson-Dow Distinguished Teaching Award, 2005

 • National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2004

 • Research Innovation Award (Research Corp.), 2002

 • UCLA Career Development Award, 2001

 • Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, 2001
Research

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Microscopy & Imaging: Theory & Applications

   
I.

 Research Theme
  Channeling progress in fundamental physics into significant improvements in magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging with valuable applications in biomedical sciences.
   
II. Theory of Chaotic Magnetic Resonance
   
 

(1) Spin Chaos & Dipolar Instability.

Understand spin turbulence, a spatial-temporal chaos, in the theoretical framework of classical chaos. Develop a quantum-mechanics description to the dipolar instability phenomena in liquids.

   
 

(2) Spin Control & Ultra-High Field NMR

Reproduce irreproducible high-field solution NMR experiments by control of spin chaos. “Homogenize” and “stabilize” the fluctuating field of ultra-high field magnets to study high-field spin physics.
   

 

(3) Spin Traps & Solitonic Phase Relaxation.

Dynamical traps resulting from spin chaos generate solitonic modes in the NMR transverse relaxation of dipole-coupled many-spin systems. This striking phenomenon is confirmed by experiments and classical-spin molecular-dynamics simulations.
   
 

(4) Spin Amplification in Biomolecular NMR.

The extreme sensitivity of the chaotic dynamics to the initial conditions, coupled with effective control of the chaos, can be used to construct a high-gain spin amplifier for sensitivity and resolution/contrast enhancement.

   
III. Applications of Chaotic Magnetic Resonance
   
 

(1) Sensitivity Enhancement.

Enhancement of sensitivity and resolution/contrast are two major research directions in magnetic resonance. The feasibility of signal amplification is numerically and experimentally demonstrated by amplifying ~ 48 times the

  small magnetization transferred to water 1H from 13C in biomolecules (typical gain 30~200). Such a gain in sensitivity translates into a vast reduction in acquisition time. Even higher gain can be achieved by better chaos control schemes.
   
 

(2) Contrast Enhancement.

The discovered chaotic dynamics also provides a fundamentally new mechanism to achieve significant enhancement in spatial contrast and temporal resolution in spatially resolved magnetic resonance, as demonstrated by brain imaging numerical simulations.
     
 

(3) Tumor Detection & Molecular Imaging.

iZQC (intermolecular zero-quantum coherence) detection is sensitive to differences in oxygenation level between cancerous and healthy tissue. The spin-amplified iZQC images (numerical simulation) provide even more vivid contrast. Such improvements are crucial to the detection of smaller, developing tumors.

Molecular imaging of metabolic activity, protein-ligand interaction and other sub-cellular events require sufficient contrast to be generated. By integrating control of spin chaos with MR microscopy, molecular imaging by chaotic MR should be exceptionally sensitive
  to spatial variations in spin density, relaxation times, and translational motion and therefore allow the detection of low concentrations of target molecules.
     
 
Contact Info

Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
UCLA
Box 951569 (post)
607 Charles E. Young Drive East (courier)
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569

Phone: (310) 206-2856
Fax: (310) 206-4038
Group Office: (310) 206-9887
Email: yylin@chem.ucla.edu
 
Group Members

Jamie D. Walls

(postdoc, Ph.D. UC Berkeley 2003)

 

Maria Y. Wang

(2nd year grad., B.S. Chinese Science & Technology University 2001)

 

Susie Y. Huang

(1st year grad., A.B. and M.S. Harvard University, 2002)

 

Frederick Phoa

(1st year grad., B.S. UCLA, 2002)

 

Mindy Johnson

(1st year grad., B.S. Pacific Union College, 2002)

 

Monty Liong

(3rd year undergrad.)

 

Angel Li

(2nd year undergrad.)