All Things Cryo Course 2026

Saskia Bakker

University of Warwick, UK

Dr Saskia Bakker is a technical specialist and the Manager of the Advanced Bioimaging RTP at the University of Warwick. In this role she looks after three electron microscopes and their users, and samples ranging from tissue to purified proteins.

Saskia first learned cryo-TEM during her PhD at the University of Leeds, where she was solving the structure of small icosahedral viruses. She then changed direction slightly to cryo-electron tomography, during her post-doc studying human enveloped viruses by at the MRC - University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.

Saskia’s current projects include investigating samples from polymer chemistry and extracellular vesicle groups by cryo-TEM and cryo-SEM, as well as tissues and cells by room temperature TEM. She is working closely with microbiologists investigating biofilm structure using cryo-SEM. She is also interested in studying cell entry mechanisms of metallic nanoparticles by array tomography and cryo-X-ray tomography.

Saskia is a member of the Cryo-Microscopy Group organising committee, and the RMS Outreach and Education Committee.

Emma Hesketh

University of Leicester

Emma manages the CryoEM facility at the University of Leicester (LISCB) which is part of the Midlands Regional CryoEM consortium including the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Nottingham. The Midlands Regional CryoEM Facility house a Titan Krios G3 equipped with a Gatan K3/BioQuantum and a dedicated freezing laboratory. As CryoEM Facility Manager Emma oversees day-to-day running of the CryoEM facility including training users, troubleshooting experiments and assisting external users. Emma is interested in troubleshooting grid preparation issues and analysing data.
 
The CryoEM facilities at Leicester are available for external users please go to www.leicester.ac.uk/cryoem to find out more. 

Nicole Hondow

University of Leeds

Nicole is an Associate Professor in the area of Materials Characterisation at the University of Leeds. Prior to this she completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Chemistry at The University of Western Australia, and undertook postdoctoral research University of Leeds in the electron microscopy of materials relevant to catalysis and toxicology. Nicole’s current research uses analytical electron microscopy in the examination and quantification of nanomaterials in complex matrices. She is particularly interested in applying cryogenic approaches to capture nano- and soft-materials in the native state, with analysis by analytical (S)TEM and FIB-SEM.

Chris Parmenter

University of Nottingham

Christopher is a Research Officer in Cryogenic Electron Microscopy. His PhD is in polymer chemistry through which he developed skills in Cryo-TEM whilst investigating soft and biological systems. He recently moved into SEM, specifically Cryo-SEM and FIB-SEM of any samples where there is a nano-scale problem to solve or understand. He is keen to meet with other microscopists to further his knowledge of EM & other techniques.
Chris is currently the Editor of Microscopy & Analysis.

Paul Verkade

University of Bristol

Paul has been involved in electron microscopy since the start of his career and during that time he has developed a particular interest in the development and application of new imaging technologies, mainly in the field of Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM). He is very engaged in the imaging community such as BioimagingUK, being a founder of EM-UK with Pippa Hawes, and Work Group leader CLEM within the EU COST action COMULIS. He loves organising training events and as such has been involved in many (RMS and EMBO) courses.