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  Professor Gail McConnell

  Light Microscopy Section Chair

  University of Strathclyde
  Gail is Chair of Biophotonics at the Department of Physics 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 Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.

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  Professor Ian Dobbie

  Light Microscopy Section Deputy Chair

  Johns Hopkins University.
  Ian recently moved to Johns Hopkins as Research Professor and Director of the Integrated Imaging Center at the Hopkins Homewood Campus. Previously he was Technical Director at Micron Oxford, a multidisciplinary BioImaging Unit working with biomedical researchers in the Oxford area and beyond. 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, the University of Oxford and Johns Hopkins University. Over the last 15 years he has specialised in building and using advanced fluorescence microscopy, especially novel super resolution imaging systems.

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  Dr Kurt Anderson

  The 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)

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  Dr Susan Cox

  King's College London
  Susan works at the Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics, developing fluorescence microscopy techniques and applying them to discover new cell biology at the nanoscale. In 2011 she was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, which she used to develop a substantial research program based around localisation microscopy, and methods to extract more information from super-resolution image data. SC is best known as the developer of Bayesian analysis of blinking and bleaching (3B), a method for analysing extremely dense localisation microscopy image series. Its importance has been recognised with the award of the Royal Microscopical Society light microscopy medal and the Society of Experimental Biology Presidents Medal. More recently, she has explored the limits of localisation in terms of speed and accuracy. She mathematically described the role of the size of the point spread function size in limiting information transmission speed and developed a machine learning based approach to remove poor fits from the super resolution image. Since it is obviously more desirable to avoid poor fits in the first place, she developed Haar Wavelet Kernel analysis (HAWK), an approach to localisation microscopy data analysis which avoids artifacts and ensures the results reflect the underlying structure of the sample.

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  Dr Siân Culley

  King’s College London
  Siân is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at King’s College London, working on developing new image analysis methods driven by real biological questions. Previously she was a postdoctoral research in Ricardo Henriques’ lab at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, working on analytical methods for improving super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Prior to joining Ricardo’s group, she did a PhD in Optical Microscopy and an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences, both at UCL. In addition to research, Siân is also passionate about creating open source teaching material, outreach work, and driving towards better diversity and representation in the microscopy community.

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  Dr Joelle Goulding

  University of Nottingham
  Joëlle is a research fellow in advanced microscopy at the University of Nottingham within the Centre of Membrane Proteins and Receptors (COMPARE). COMPARE is a unique collaboration between the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham. Following a PhD in Genetics at the University of Nottingham, she moved into the field of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pharmacology within the group of Professor Stephen Hill specialising in the development of imaging technologies to study the pharmacology of Class A GPCRs utilising fluorescent ligands and bioluminescent fusion proteins. This work has harboured an interest in studying endogenous receptor function and translating techniques for use within stem cell derived model systems. In 2017 Joëlle joined COMPARE and is working on the development of Fluorescent Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) methodologies alongside Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) imaging for GPCRs and tyrosine kinases.

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  Dr Mike MacDonald

  University of Dundee
  Mike 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

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  Dr Sebastian Munck

  VIB Bio Imaging Core KU Leuven
  I started my career in Munich, where I studied Biology and later obtained a Ph.D at the BioImaging Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University. Later I worked as a Product Manager for Till Photonics, in Germany, between 2003 and 2004. After that I moved to Innsbruck as a Postdoc at the Medical University, from 2004 to 2006. I became Staff Scientist at the VIB in 2007 and in 2013 consequently independent group leader as Expert Technologist. In this function I also established the Leuven part of the VIB Bio Imaging Core and the Departmental imaging facility at the Center for Brain and Disease research. I was appointed Assistant Professor (part-time) at Faculty of Medicine KU Leuven in 2015. 

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  Dr Mike Shaw

  National Physical Laboratory & University College London
  Mike is a Senior Research Scientist at NPL where he leads the development of high-resolution optical microscopy techniques for bioimaging with particular interests in structured illumination and light sheet fluorescence microscopy. He works with a multidisciplinary team of scientists to apply these techniques to study a range of biological systems and processes including protein fibrillogenesis, intracellular delivery and the effects of therapeutic and toxic compounds on vitro models. Mike is also a senior research fellow in the Department of Computer Science at UCL where his work focuses on the application of computational imaging (light field and ptychographic microscopy) and image analysis for digital pathology. Mike holds an MSci degree in physics and a PhD in physics, both from Imperial College London, and is a Chartered Physicist.

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  Dr 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. 

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  Professor 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.’

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  Mr Daniel Metcalf

  Scientifica
  My career started with a PhD in Cell Biology at UCL where I learned and applied advanced microscopy techniques to understanding neurodegeneration.  After a few short post-doc positions at UCL and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research I followed my interest and expertise in microscopy to move to the National Physical Laboratory working on super-resolution microscopy development projects. Since then I have worked for Nikon and now Scientifica selling and supporting microscopy products used in biomedical research.

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  Dr Alex Sossick

  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.

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  Dr Ann Wheeler

  University of Edinburgh
  Ann is a cell biologist and our University of Edinburgh ESRIC facility manager with expertise in advanced light microscopy in particular in Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM) and Single Molecule Localisation Super-resolution microscopy (SMLM) as well as quantitative image analysis. Ann works with collaborators in the generation of new methods and methodologies for visualising structures by super-resolution. 

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  Dr Rebecca Saleeb

  Light Microscopy Early Career Representative

  University of Edinburgh
  Rebecca is a postdoc in the Edinburgh Single-Molecule Biophysics group at the University of Edinburgh. She completed an interdisciplinary PhD with Dr Paul Dalgarno and Prof Rory Duncan, developing and using FLIM-FRET and super-resolution technologies to understand late-stage autophagy. She subsequently spent a number of years as a bio-imaging specialist/facility manager for the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium, Lisbon’s Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown and Queen Mary University of London, where she helped researchers apply optical microscopy to diverse questions of biology, spanning neuroscience, cancer, immunology and cardiovascular biology. She returned to dedicated research in 2021, working in the lab of Mathew Horrocks to explore the structure and pathogenic capacity of α-synuclein aggregates, a hallmark of Parkinson’s Disease. 

• More news +

The 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Light Microscopy Section of the Royal Microscopical Society will take place virtually on 14 October 2021, as part of the Microscopy: Advances, Innovation, Impact 2021 - incorporating the RMS AGM & Section AGMs.  The event will also include a number of scientific talks, and further information will be available soon. 

All the Society’s AGMs are free to attend for both members and non-members.   

If you are interested in joining any of the committees in the future, please contact Allison Winton.
 

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  The 2021 LM Section AGM Agenda

  Download the 2021 LM Section AGM Agenda

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  LM Section Minutes for the 2020 AGM

  Download the LM Section 2020 AGM Minutes

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  LM Section Chair Report 2021

  Download the LM Section Chair Report