On May 31, 2024, the result of the 2024 Wu Rui Scholarship was announced, with 11 outstanding doctoral students nationwide receiving the prestigious award. Among them, two students from Tsinghua University were selected, including Zhao Zhifeng, a PhD student at the Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science (THUIBCS) under the supervision of Professor Dai Qionghai.

Zhifeng Zhao joined Dai's group in 2017 to pursue his PhD, focusing on the research of two-photon computational microscopy. Under the guidance of Qionghai Dai and Jiamin Wu, he collaborated with Yiliang Zhou, Liu Bo, and He Jing et al. to research two-photon microscopy, focusing on the challenges of limited imaging throughput, deep scattering imaging, and serious photobleaching and phototoxicity. He proposed a series of innovative solutions to these challenges.

To address these challenges, Zhifeng Zhao combined the advantages of computational photography and successfully built a two-photon synthetic aperture microscopy. The system uses multi-angle 'needle' scanning to replace the traditional three-dimensional imaging method of point-by-point scanning, improving the imaging throughput of two-photon imaging and reducing phototoxicity. It also combines digital adaptive optics technology to enhance the image quality in deep scattering tissue.

Zhifeng Zhao has published research papers in Cell, and Biomedical Optics Express as the first or co-first author, and co-authored research papers in Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, and Neuron et al.. His research findings have attracted widespread international attention.