Dickinson's group develops advanced optical microscopy methods for biological and biomedical imaging. Research directions: (1) STORM super-resolution microscopy — stochastic optical reconstruction for nanoscale imaging of biological structures at ~20 nm lateral resolution; imaging cytoskeletal dynamics, cellular organelles, and pathological structures; (2) Optical coherence tomography (OCT) — depth-resolved, label-free imaging for biomedical diagnostics (retinal, cardiovascular tissues); (3) Laser speckle imaging — blood flow and perfusion measurements in tissues; (4) Multiphoton microscopy — second harmonic generation (SHG) and two-photon for collagen structure imaging in connective tissues and cancer. Part of the Manchester Photon Science Institute biophotonics theme.
Marileen Dogterom (Full Professor, BioNanoscience) studies cytoskeleton dynamics and synthetic cell construction. Research: (1) microtubule dynamics — force generation, catastrophe control, and mitotic spindle assembly reconstituted in vitro; (2) cell division reconstitution — building minimal synthetic cells with controlled division; (3) optical tweezers and fluorescence microscopy for force measurement on single cytoskeletal elements. Co-founded BioNanoscience department.
Dunsby co-invented oblique plane microscopy (a single-objective light-sheet technique) and develops multidimensional fluorescence lifetime and light-sheet imaging instrumentation for live-cell and tissue imaging, applied to cancer diagnostics and cell biology.
Edel's group develops nanopore- and nanogap-based single-molecule sensing platforms, combining nanofluidics, plasmonics and electrical/optical readout for ultrasensitive detection and sequencing of biomolecules.
Develops biophotonics and optical instrumentation for live-cell and cancer imaging, including multiphoton microscopy, image informatics, and quantitative image analysis tools; affiliated with the Morgridge Institute for Research.
Fleming pioneered microstructured polymer optical fibre and continues to work on specialty fibre fabrication: drawing exotic polymer, hybrid polymer-metal and poled-silicate structures that would be impossible in conventional silica, and using them to build metamaterials and biomedical photonic devices including fibre-based sensors and probes. The fabrication route — preform drawing — gives access to geometries and material combinations that lithography cannot reach. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the relevance to a sensing postdoc is delivery and packaging: fibre-integrated probes are the standard way to get an NV or vapour-cell sensor into a biological or field environment while preserving its pT/sqrt(Hz) sensitivity. Borderline inclusion; senior PI, fabrication-led.
Fletcher combines optical and force microscopy (AFM, optical tweezers) with purified-protein and single-cell assays to measure the mechanics of cell movement and immune-cell activation, and has also developed low-cost imaging instrumentation (foldscopes, phone-based microscopes) for global health.
French is Professor and former Head of the Photonics Group (2001–2013). His group at Imperial (with Dunsby and Neil) develops multidimensional fluorescence imaging technology for life sciences and clinical applications. Research portfolio: (1) FLIM — wide-field time-gated FLIM using gated optical intensifiers and TCSPC for single-cell FRET-based biosensing of protein-protein interactions, cell signalling (kinase activity), and drug-target engagement in multi-well plates; (2) Super-resolved microscopy — STED, easySTORM (lower-cost STORM), and SIM+FLIM for mapping molecular function to biological nanostructure below the diffraction limit; (3) FLIM endoscopy — flexible wide-field FLIM endoscopes for label-free cancer diagnostics (autofluorescence lifetime) and osteoarthritis cartilage; (4) Open-source imaging — automated multiwell plate FLIM reader for high-content drug screening. Satellite lab at Francis Crick Institute.
Gambin was the first EMBL Australia group leader appointed to Single Molecule Science. His signature method combines cell-free protein expression with two-colour single-molecule coincidence and fluctuation spectroscopy, which sidesteps purification entirely: proteins are expressed, labelled and measured in lysate, an order of magnitude faster than conventional interaction assays. The biology is protein self-association and aggregation — alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's, cardiac and muscular disease proteins — where the size distribution of oligomers, not the mean, is the quantity of interest. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the conceptual overlap with quantum biosensing is the insistence on distributions over averages, and his aggregation systems (paramagnetic-species-generating, redox-active amyloid) are a plausible target for T1-relaxometry-based NV detection at pT/sqrt(Hz) in the near term.
Garcia combines light-sheet and single-molecule fluorescence imaging with quantitative modeling to measure transcriptional dynamics in living Drosophila embryos in real time, quantifying how individual promoters and enhancers make fast, precise decisions during development. The group is actively recruiting postdocs interested in physical biology and quantitative live imaging.