Investigators

Summary

Optical Microscopy has formed the core of my research career since my graduate training in England.  In the CBI which I founded and direct, we build, test, and use cutting edge optical tools for all types of research microscopic imaging in cells, tissues and animals from the single molecule to the whole animal, the goal being to build highly flexible, maximally effective imaging solutions, to be used by academic researchers.  In fact a major focus of my career and of the Center is to develop, train and imbue researchers at all levels (undergraduate, student, post-doc and faculty) with a solid understanding (both theoretical and practical) of the power of microscopy.   As a professor of Cell Biology a major focus of my research has been to develop, build, and apply computer aided microscopes and analysis tools for imaging subcellular events at all levels of resolution within fixed and living systems. These include high speed Total internal Reflection Fluorescence microscopes able to image at 100 frames/second, high speed confocal systems able to collect multicolor 3D stacks in the second timeframe and other prototype confocal systems able to scan very large tissue sections with submicron resolution at very high speed. Most recently we have been developing very high speed deep tissue imaging solutions to collect quantitative images at the diffraction limit of entire tissues including brain, and building automated multi-spectral upright solutions combined with deep learning methods to dissect spectrally complex multiplex samples, including novel approaches for studying collagen organization in large tissue volumes.