Mr Alex Sossick

Light Microscopy Section Chair

University of Cambridge
Alex heads the Imaging Facility at the Gurdon Institute, which includes a variety of microscopy techniques including confocal, high throughput and deconvolution. He is keen to raise the level of microscopy understanding and application, and runs and takes part in various microscopy courses.

Prof Gail McConnell

Light Microscopy Section Deputy Chair

University of Strathclyde
Gail McConnell is Chair of Biophotonics at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde.  Following a first degree in Laser Physics and Optoelectronics (1998) and PhD in Physics from the University of Strathclyde (2002), she obtained a Personal Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2003) and a Research Councils UK Academic Fellowship (2005), securing a readership in 2008. Since 2004, Gail has received over £9M of research funding from a range of sources including EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC, EU and industry. The work in Gail’s group involves the design, development and application of linear and nonlinear optical instrumentation for biomedical imaging, from the nanoscale to the whole organism. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society

Dr Simon Ameer-Beg

King's College London
Simon Ameer-Beg is a Senior Lecturer in the Cancer Cell Biology & Imaging at King’s College, London. His research interests include: Protein-protein interactions, Multiphoton Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging, Single molecule imaging; FRET, and Fluorescence anisotropy.

Prof Kurt Anderson

Francis Crick Institute
Kurt is a cell biologist who uses advanced imaging methods to study cell migration. He completed his PhD at the University of Salzburg in 1997 on the actin-based mechanism of fish keratocyte migration. He then spent 2 years as a post-doc at the Marie Curie Cancer Research Institute (UK) before moving to Dresden in 2001 to set up the light microscopy facility at the new MPI-CBG. In 2005 he moved to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, where he runs the Beatson Advanced Imaging Resource (BAIR) and a research group investigating tumor cell migration. His work at the Beatson used imaging methods such as FRAP and FRET to study the molecular dynamics of cell adhesion and migration in vitro and in vivo. In 2016 Kurt moved to the Francis Crick Institute, where he is now Head of the Crick Advanced Light Microscopy Facility (CALM)

Dr Susan Cox

Light Microscopy Representative infocus Editorial Board

King's College London
Susan is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Randall Division of Biophysics at King's College London. Following a PhD in transmission electron microscopy at Cambridge, she spent three years at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Los Alamos looking at the behaviour of the low temperature phases of strongly correlated electron systems. Her current primary interest is the development of new super-resolution localisation microscopy techniques, both through the development of optical systems and the creation of novel image analysis algorithms. She uses these techniques to investigate the behaviour of the cytoskeleton in live cells at the nanoscale. In 2015, Susan was awarded the RMS Medal for Light Microscopy and the President's Medal of the Society of Experimental Biology for the Cell Section.

Dr Sian Culley

UCL
Siân Culley is a postdoc in the Quantitative Imaging and Nanobiophysics group at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at UCL. After doing an MSci project with Prof. Jonathan Ashmore in two-photon imaging of calcium signalling in inner hair cells, she moved into the field of super-resolution microscopy for her PhD with Dr Angus Bain investigating photophysical processes in CW-STED microscopy. In 2014 she joined Ricardo Henriques’ group, and her current research interests lie in developing open source hardware and analytics for live cell super-resolution microscopy. She also has an active interest in promoting women in microscopy.

Dr Ian Dobbie

University of Oxford
Ian is the Facility Manager at Micron Oxford, a multidisciplinary BioImaging Unit working with biomedical researchers in the Oxford area and beyond, located with the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. Ian has over 15 years’ experience in biological imaging gained in a range of leading academic institutes. He gained a degree in physics and a masters in computer modelling before moving on to do a PhD in muscle mechanics at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at Kings College London. Since then he has been working in imaging with a range of biological systems at number of world class research centres including, Cancer Research UK, Kings College London and the University of Oxford. Over the last 10 years he has specialised in advanced fluorescence microscopy.

Dr Alison Dun

Heriot-Watt University
Alison is the facility manager for the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium (ESRIC) and is based at the Heriot-Watt University site. Alison completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2013 where she used a wide range of advanced imaging techniques to study cell membrane biology. Alison now works in an interdisciplinary environment, running the imaging facility at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Bioengineering and Biophysics at Heriot-Watt University. 

Prof Mark Leake

University of York
Since 2013 Mark has been the Chair of Biological Physics in the University of York, and heads the Biological Physics Group. His primary research interest lies in addressing unresolved biological questions, which are intractable with conventional bulk ensemble average methods, by developing new single-molecule microscopy, to advance understanding of native cell biology. His most important independent scientific contribution is the conception/development of multidimensional fluorescence imaging and analytical tools allowing single-molecule characterization in molecular machines in vivo at millisecond time scales, including invention of multicolour ‘slimfield’ super-resolution imaging and photophysical algorithms quantifying molecular composition, architecture and mobility, and is pushing forward the emergence of a new field of ‘single-molecule cellular biophysics.’

Dr Mike MacDonald

University of Dundee

Mike MacDonald is a Reader in Physics in the School of Medicine and School of Science and Engineering at the University of Dundee. Following a first degree in Laser Physics and Optoelectronics (1996) from the University of Strathclyde (2002) then an MSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland, Mike moved back to the UK to pursue research in optical manipulation and imaging at the University of St Andrews.  He obtained an Advanced Research Fellowship from the EPSRC (2005) and moved to Dundee in 2007.  Since arriving in Dundee Mike has applied his physics background to solving imaging and manipulation challenges in the life sciences and medicine, often through the development of new lightsheet microscopies for imaging plant roots and chicken embryos

Mr Chris Power

Carl Zeiss Ltd
Chris is a 3D Imaging Specialist at Carl Zeiss, UK.

Dr Noah Russell

University of Nottingham
Noah is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham.

Dr Rebecca Saleeb

Champalimaud Foundation
Rebecca is an Imaging Specialist at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon. She completed an interdisciplinary PhD at Heriot-Watt University in early 2017, where she used commercial and developmental FLIM-FRET technology alongside super-resolution techniques to dissect the regulation of late-stage autophagy. She has since spent a year managing the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium, assisting users in SMLM, gSTED, FCS and FLIM, and leading the organisation of their international summer school. 

Ms Sue Wilson

Leica Microsystems UK
Sue is a Sales Manager for Leica Microsystems UK.