Dr. Jesse Jokerst

Biography

Jesse V. Jokerst is a Professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the University of California San Diego, primarily focusing on Molecular Imaging, in vitro Diagnostics, ultrasound photoacoustic imaging, regenerative medicine, cancer detection, and tumor resection. His research aims to enhance the signal quality received from nanoparticle contrast agents in living subjects. His group's work prominently features ultrasound imaging to achieve high temporal and spatial resolution. Notably, he utilizes photoacoustic imaging, which operates on a 'light in/sound out' principle, diverging from traditional 'sound in/sound out' ultrasound methods. Jokerst has employed photoacoustic imaging for diverse applications such as tracking and quantifying stem cells and imaging tumors in vivo. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Truman State University (2003) and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin (2009). Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the Department of Radiology, he became an instructor at UC San Diego from 2013 to 2015. Since establishing his independent lab at UC San Diego in July 2015, he has received multiple honors including the NIH K99/R00 Pathway Independence Award, the NIH New Innovator Award, and the NSF CAREER Award. Jokerst has been the principal investigator on over fifteen federal grants and has published more than 150 manuscripts. He also serves as an Associate Editor for ACS Applied Materials Interfaces and is a founding advisor for the LGBT+ student organization oSTEM at UC San Diego.

Research Interests

Experience