Life Sciences

Morag Rose Hunter

Life Sciences Section Chair , AstraZeneca

Morag Rose Hunter is a cell biologist with a special interest in high throughput, high content imaging assays. After her PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and a postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge (UK), Morag joined AstraZeneca in 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow. Now she is an Associate Principal Scientist in Functional Genomics, running target identification screens with complex imaging and machine learning / artificial intelligence-based analysis techniques. Her long-term interest is in cellular membrane trafficking and it’s influence on the efficacy of RNA therapeutics.

Steve Thomas

Life Sciences Section Vice Chair, University of Birmingham

Steve is a Lecturer in the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, College of Medical and Dental Sciences. His interest is in using imaging approaches to understand the cytoskeletal organisation of platelets and their precursor cell the megakaryocyte, and how this regulates platelet production and function. He has a background in plant cell biology and made the move to studying the mammalian cytoskeleton during a postdoc with Prof Laura Machesky. Steve’s recent focus has been on applying new advances in fluorescence microscopy, including TIRF, super-resolution and light sheet microscopy to study how the actin cytoskeleton is required for protrusion of proplatelets through blood vessel walls during platelet formation, and in help platelet aggregates adhere and resist shear forces in blood flow.

Steven West

Histology Focussed Interest Group Chair, Life Sciences Section Deputy Chair , Sainsbury Wellcome Centre

Steven J. West is Head of Histology at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre,
developing histology, tissue clearing, and image analysis methods to study the
organisation of the central nervous system. He works with the International
Brain Laboratory on whole-brain mapping using serial two-photon and light-sheet
microscopy. He completed his DPhil in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford,
focusing on histological and stereological assessment of synaptic structures,
and later specialised in tissue clearing and quantitative histological analysis
during postdoctoral research.

Jacquelyn Bond

Outreach & Education Committee Representative, University of Leeds

Jacquie is a Senior Lecturer in the Leeds Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health based at St James’s University Hospital. Her research group uses imaging approaches to investigate genes and proteins involved in mitosis, which when mutated cause Autosomal Recessive Primary Microcephaly (MCPH). The group use live cell imaging, confocal, super resolution and high-content high-throughput microscopy to identify and quantitate changes in mitotic spindle orientation, microtubule and actin organisation and cell cycle progression in patient cells and modified cancer cells. Jacquie’s interest in cell biology and imaging has led to her developing a high-throughput high-content imaging bio-screening facility at Leeds, which screens whole and partial genome siRNA/miRNA libraries and small molecule libraries to identify components of biological/disease pathways, therapeutic targets and novel therapeutic drugs.  Currently she is the Academic Lead for imaging for the SCIF Flow Cytometry and Imaging Facility, University of Leeds, which for imaging encompasses a number of widefield, live cell and confocal imaging systems and the bio-screening service.

Thomas Brown

University of Cambridge

Thomas Brown began his academic journey studying archaeology at the University of Sheffield. During his undergraduate degree, he took a part-time job at a nursing home across the street, an experience that sparked his interest in neuroscience. Motivated to explore the complexities of the brain, particularly in the context of neurodegeneration and regeneration, he pursued a Master’s in Translational Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield before embarking on a PhD at McGill University in Montreal. During his doctoral research in the lab of Dr Michel Cayouette (IRCM), Thomas co-authored a project that identified Pou3f1 as a key gene in the development of binocular retinal projections. He also led a second project which uncovered a role of glial cell signalling in shaping the light-sensitive circuits which regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Thomas has since shifted his focus to the hypothalamus. In the lab of Professor Clémence Blouet at the Institute of Metabolic Science, he is helping to investigate a particularly dynamic population of oligodendrocytes, the myelin-producing cells that insulate neuronal electrical signals. Beyond his research, Thomas is a dedicated advocate for science communication and public engagement. He has participated in and coordinated multiple outreach projects in UK and Canada, striving to make neuroscience more accessible to wider audiences. He remains actively involved in outreach and engagement initiatives at the university and with the wider-community.

Leo Carlin

University of Glasgow

I am an immunologist based at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute (CRUK SI) in Glasgow. I lead the Leukocyte Dynamics cancer immunology group and the Beatson Advanced Imaging Resource (BAIR) advanced microscopy team. The Leukocyte Dynamics Group aim to uncover how immune cells, in particular, the myeloid cells of the innate immune system, can exert both pro- and anti- tumour activity and how this can be understood and/or manipulated for better patient treatment strategies.  The BAIR team provides a comprehensive pipeline of advanced microscopy support and intellectual input to address questions from the broad research community we are fortunate to interact with. I did my BSc in Immunology at UCL followed by a PhD imaging immune cells at Imperial.  I used microscopy to address the function of NK cells, and then monocytes during postdoctoral training at KCL. I initially started the Leukocyte Dynamics Group at Imperial and moved to the CRUK SI (then the Beatson Institute) in 2016.

Alexander Johnson

University of Warwick

Dr Alex Johnson is an Independent Research Fellow in Biosciences at the University of Warwick, UK. His research uses a combination of microscopy and spectroscopy to investigate how plant cells interact with their environments. Specifically,  the molecular mechanism of plant endocytosis and how they mediate plant growth and development in response to environmental stresses. While his PhD investigated synaptic vesicle recycling in the lab of Prof. Mike Cousin (University of Edinburgh), he became interested in how eukaryotes with different protein machinery and biophysical properties completed the same cellular processes, and thus began to work with plants. He joined the groups of Dr. Christien Merrifield and Dr. Grégory Vert (CNRS-I2BC, France), and later Prof. Jiří Friml (ISTA, Austria), to investigate planta endocytosis, where he established quantitative imaging tools to directly visualise plant endocytosis at the ultrastructural, live single event, and tissue scales. He then joined the lab of Dr. Kareem Elsayad (Medical University of Vienna, Austria), where he developed optical approaches to determine cellular biomechanical properties in a range of biological samples. 
 

Johannes Lehmann

University of Oxford

Johannes manages the Digital Pathology Omics Core (DPOC) at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (University of Oxford, UK), where he develops 3D spatial proteomics methods and tools to map cell states across tissues. He is especially interested in making spatial proteomics easier to use, more scalable and more affordable (‘multiplexing for the masses’), tapping geospatial analysis workflows from outside the life sciences and integrating single cell fate recording with tissue-level phenotype mapping.

Johannes started working on spatial proteomics when he characterised cellular senescence in ageing and cancer as postdoctoral researcher in the group of Peter de Keizer at the University Medical Center Utrecht (the Netherlands).

Senescent cells are both rare and heterogenous, so he worked on improving the throughput of spatial proteomics to identify them in biopsies and then leveraged that to build organoid models of ageing and cancer-associated senescence. His interest on senescence in turn stemmed from his PhD with Prof. Gerjo van Osch and Dr. Derk ten Berge at the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam (the Netherlands) where he investigated the intersection of ageing and WNT signalling in cartilage regeneration.

Stefan Linder

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

Stefan is Professor for Cellular Microbiology at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). Stefan completed his PhD, which was focused on the analysis of unusual tubulins in amoeba, in Cell Biology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich in 1997. He then moved to the Department of Medicine in Munich as a postdoc, where he started to work on the cytoskeleton of primary human cells. Following his habilitation for Clinical Cell Biology in 2003, Stefan established his own group at LMU. He was appointed Professor for Cellular Microbiology at UKE Hamburg in 2009. His group is particularly interested in the dynamic regulation of the macrophage actin and tubulin cytoskeletons, especially in the context of intracellular transport, cell migration and invasion, as well as phagocytosis of bacteria (www.linderlab.de). His fascination with cellular and subcellular dynamics led to a strong emphasis on microscopic techniques in the lab, including high speed live cell imaging, macro-based image analysis and superresolution techniques. Stefan admits to being quite partial to podosomes, highly dynamic cellular adhesion and invasion structures. In consequence, he became founding member and co-president of the Invadosome Consortium (www.invadosomes.org), a group of labs focusing on the analysis of podosomes and invadopodia, and served as a coordinator for the FP7-funded international training network „T3Net“ (Tissue Transmigration Training network) from 2009-2013. Stefan has been an editor of European Journal of Cell Biology since 2010 and a member of Faculty of 1000 since 2010

Alan Marron

Oxford Brookes University

Alan is the Light Microscopy Specialist at the Oxford Brookes Centre for BioImaging. He did his PhD in Michael Akam’s lab at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, investigating the evolution of silicon biomineralization in eukaryotes. This research focused on skeleton formation in choanoflagellates, a protist group that are the closest single-celled relatives to animals. Alan continued this research on choanoflagellates at the University of California, Berkeley and at DAMTP Cambridge. He used techniques such as high-speed imaging and fluorescent silica dyes to study how choanoflagellate colonies and flagella operate, and how their cells form individual skeletal elements. After this, Alan was a postdoc at the Department of Plant Sciences in Cambridge, working on an enhancer trap project to mark different cell types in the model liverwort Marchantia, and to investigate chloroplast dynamics. This involved confocal microscopy, time lapse imaging and laser ablation methods. In Alan’s current role at the Oxford Brookes Centre for BioImaging  he is responsible for the running of the microscope facilities and supporting users of the light microscopes and collaborating on bioimaging projects. This involves everything from training and experimental design to image analysis and symposium organization. He is interested is in applying specialist techniques, such as expansion microscopy and FLIM, to more bespoke experimental systems such as protists and plants.

Jessica Valli

Heriot-Watt University

Jessica is the Facility Manager for the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium (ESRIC) and is based at the Heriot-Watt University site. Jessica completed her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2017 where she used a wide range of advanced imaging techniques to study parasite-host interactions. Jessica now works in an interdisciplinary environment, running the imaging facility at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Bioengineering and Biophysics at Heriot-Watt University. 

Chun Hao Wong

University of Cambridge

My research combines microscopy, CRISPR perturbation and high-throughput screening to study cellular processes that can only be uncovered through visualisation. I am interested in the development of spatial imaging technologies to study complex phenotypes. My previous work has applied multiplexed protein mapping, image-based profiling and in situ sequencing to systematically map the genetic perturbation effect at scale. At the Functional Genomics Screening Laboratory, I lead initiatives in forming academic-industry collaborations to apply CRISPR screening, often paired with imaging endpoints across diverse cell models to advance mechanistic understanding.