Organising Committee
Mentees
Siân Culley
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.
Joëlle Goulding
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.
Liam Rooney
Liam is a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Liam has a background in mammalian cell and molecular biology but developed his skillset as an optical microscopist and microbiologist during his PhD. Since 2016, Liam has focussed his research on the development and application of optical microscopy methods to study how bacteria interact with each other and their environment. His research involves various bacteriological phenomena; from understanding bacterial gliding motility, visualising colonisation behaviours using transparent soil, observing nutrient transport channels in bacterial biofilms, and super-resolution imaging of bacterial and fungal cell-to-cell interactions. Liam’s current research focuses on developing open microscopy solutions for the life sciences. He is the current Chair of the RMS Early Career Section and has sat on the RMS Life Sciences Section Committee since 2018, and is also heavily involved in the Microbiology Society.
Jessica Valli
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.
Mentors
Kurt Anderson
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)
Marco Marcello
I am managing the Centre for Cell Imaging in the University of Liverpool. After the PhD in the University of Heidelberg (Germany), I was a postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg in the laboratory of Prof. Ernst Stelzer where I contributed to the development of the light sheet microscope. I joined Liverpool University in 2008. My current research interests include light sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM), tissue clearing, development of innovative hydrogels/matrices for 3D cell culture/volumetric imaging.
Gail McConnell FRMS
Gail 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 Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.
Peter O'Toole
Peter heads the Imaging and Cytometry Labs within the Technology Facility at the University of York which includes an array of confocal microscopes, flow cytometers and electron microscopes. Peter gained his PhD in the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Essex and has been involved in many aspects of fluorescence imaging. Research is currently focused on both technology and method development of novel probes and imaging modalities.
Peter has ongoing collaborations with many leading microscopy and cytometry companies and his group also provides research support to many academics and commercial organisations. Peter is also heavily involved with teaching microscopy and flow cytometry which includes organising and teaching on both the RMS Light Microscopy Summer School and the RMS Practical Flow Cytometry courses.
Tim Self
Tim Self is a Chief Experimental Officer and Head of the Imaging facility at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham. His interest and passion for microscopy started in his undergraduate project using electron microscopy at the University of Sheffield and has spent the proceeding 35 years putting that passion into practice. For half of his career Tim has applied electron microscopy to many biological research questions until in 2000 he saw the light and moved over full time to light microscopy. He now runs a large core facility with EM, histology, super resolution, confocal, wide field, High Content, FCS and TIRF imaging at the University of Nottingham.