I  did my PhD in Applied Physics, but then changed direction to Biomedicine, designing algorithms and software for Optical Microscopy, Cardiology, and Bioengineering. In CRUK we are bridging the wealth of multi-modal imaging data with advanced statistics and other math methods, aiming at attaining knowledge necessary for finding effective cure for cancer. But I think “CRUK is not an island”; the tools we are advancing will be also instrumental in related areas, such as developmental biology, tissue engineering, etc. I believe in unifying force of science.

My PhD project in the Photonics group and NHLI at Imperial College was focused on remote-refocusing light-sheet fluorescence microscopy for high-speed imaging of calcium dynamics in cardiomyocytes to study heart function and regeneration at the cellular level. My research interests include novel optical solutions for 3D imaging with high spatiotemporal resolution, and their application to open questions within the biomedical sciences. I am hopeful that advances in optical microscopy will help our understanding of cancer biology and accelerate the development of therapeutics.

I was trained as a clinician and progressed to research in cell biology following a PhD in the genetics of essential hypertension. Since 2015 I have worked in multidisciplinary teams exploring applications of novel biophotonics technologies including automated FLIM and FRET and super-resolved microscopy. I am excited by the combination of cutting edge expertise in medicine, physics, biology and biochemistry applied to develop advanced automated microscopy for HCA of cell fate in three-dimensional in-vitro models of cancer.  

I completed a Masters in Cancer and Clinical Oncology, with my research focused on understanding why changes in chromosomal copy number, that are usually detrimental to normal cells, are found in such high frequency in cancer cells, and whether this can be exploited in developing targeted cancer therapeutics. As the project manager, I am particularly excited to be involved in research that will be able to provide the technology required to image complex cellular structures. This work is vital in improving our understanding of how cancer cells interact with other cells inside the body. I am also looking forward to working with an amazing team of researchers across multiple disciples.

My PhD was split between Photonics, where I was developing instrumentation for increasing the speed at which we could take photon-counting fluorescence lifetime images, and Biology, where I was trying to create a biological system that would allow the imaging technologies to be applied to looking at signalling patterns. What excites me about the accelerator is the idea that we can bring varied imaging technologies together to bear on the same problems at the same time, and try to make them more automated and easily accessible to a wide number of biological researchers. If we can do that, then we can significantly speed up the pace at which discoveries can be made and verified, in more complex biological systems that are closer to how things are in the real world.

I carried out my PhD in the Photonics group at Imperial under the supervision of Paul French and Chris Dunsby where I developed novel time-resolved fluorescence imaging endoscope technologies for biomedical applications. Following my PhD, I joined Erik Sahai’s lab at the Crick where I investigated the application of a novel time-resolved fluorescence imaging endoscope to pre-clinical imaging of drug-target engagement during chemotherapy. Currently I am working in Chris Dunsby’s lab developing high-speed dual and single objective light-sheet florescence microscopes for high-speed and high content 3D imaging. I’m passionate about biomedical research and improving healthcare and look forward to developing enabling technologies for this CRUK Accelerator project.

In my research career I have focused on the development and application of advanced fluorescence microscopes to biological research projects. In my PhD I developed a super-resolution microscope and combined this with an atomic force microscope for a neuroscience project. In my recent project I worked with OPM for fast screening of the 3D shape of melanoma cells. A key motivator for me in the CRUK Accelerator project is translating new, advanced, systems into instruments that can be routinely used by cancer researchers.

As a PhD student at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, I worked on developing novel fluorescent probes, optical hardware, and data analysis techniques for use in live cell super-resolution microscopy. My research interests the application of physics and mathematics in the development of technologies which advance the progress of experimental biology and biophysics. I believe that novel imaging modalities, used in combination with predictions from biophysical models could vastly accelerate our basic understanding of the underlying mechanics of cancer cell biology. I am particularly interested in applying photophysics, optics and analytical image processing to develop experimental technology which allows high content quantitative analysis in biologically relevant samples.

During my PhD at University of Montpellier in France, I was developing tools for in vivo visualization of immune cell response to different stimuli, including bacterial infection and wounding of zebrafish larvae. I constructed different fluorescent reporters of macrophage activation states, and studied their metabolic, behavioral and morphological changes during the inflammation process at a single cell level. Imaging and image analysis of dynamic systems are my big passion and I am very excited to face very challenging high content 3D imaging and 3D segmentation of growing cancer organoids at a single cell level.