Rate My Professor Samuel Hess

Samuel Hess is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Maine, Orono. He earned a B.S. in Physics from Yale University in 1995, an M.S. in Physics from Cornell University in 1998, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 2002. In his role at the University of Maine, he serves as Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Cooperating Professor of Chemistry, and member of the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering. Hess is also affiliated with the UMaine Institute of Medicine, contributing to interdisciplinary biomedical research through advanced imaging techniques.

Hess specializes in experimental and theoretical biophysics, focusing on fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy, function and lateral organization of biomembranes, single-molecule fluorescence photophysics, and green fluorescent proteins. His laboratory develops and applies super-resolution localization microscopy methods to investigate nanoscale membrane dynamics, including phosphoinositide clustering in immune cells, viral protein-membrane interactions such as those involving influenza hemagglutinin and JC polyomavirus, caveolin-1 organization in antiviral responses, and mitochondrial effects of antimicrobial agents like triclosan and cetylpyridinium chloride. Key publications include "Ultra-high resolution imaging by fluorescence photoactivation localization microscopy" (Biophysical Journal, 2006), "Design of organic molecules with large two-photon absorption cross sections" (Science, 1998), "Imaging coexisting fluid domains in biomembrane models coupling curvature and line tension" (Nature, 2003), "Precisely and accurately localizing single emitters in fluorescence microscopy" (Nature Methods, 2014), "Actin Mediates the Nanoscale Membrane Organization of the Clustered Membrane Protein Influenza Hemagglutinin" (Biophysical Journal, 2013), "Spectral Fluorescence Photoactivation Localization Microscopy" (PLoS One, 2016), and "Nanoscale Imaging of Caveolin-1 Membrane Domains in vivo" (PLoS One, 2015). He co-authored the book Single-Molecule Super-Resolution Optical Microscopy (Springer, 2024). With 124 publications accumulating over 14,000 citations, Hess's research has made substantial contributions to super-resolution imaging and biomembrane biophysics.