December 2024

We present the U-care project, physics, medicine and engineering concepts, and STEM careers to Scottish school girls at the IoP Girls into STEM day at the University of Edinburgh.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/u-care-project/posts/?feedView=all

October 2024

Absolutely thrilled to be part of this newly announced Research and Partnership Hub. The Hub is in Microscale Science and Technology to Accelerate Therapeutic Innovation (MicroTex) and will unite engineering with robotics, AI, chemistry, physics, biology and clinical medicine. So excited about the research and partnerships to come. By partnering with academics, industry, charities and patient groups, the Hub will speed up the clinical development of new treatments for infections and inflammation in the lung, which are among the world’s leading causes of illness and death and crucially contribute to the fight against AMR.

https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/2024/new-hub-to-develop-new-treatments-for-lung-infection-and-inflammation

July 2024

The U-care team has had a brilliant week in London at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition with our exhibit ‘UV or not UV’. Principal Investigator Prof Robert Thomson was featured on BBC Health Check show.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/u-care-project/posts/?feedView=all

February 2024

Collaboration with Xianzhong Chen’s group using metasurfaces to create elaborate optical vortex beams has resulted in a paper ‘Metasurface for engineering superimposed Ince-Gaussian beams‘. Next steps; applications in microscopy and trapping!

February 2024

Congratulation to Andrew on his paper ‘Fully angular resolved 3D microrheology with optical tweezers‘; a deep-dive into how to fully analyse microrheology data.

October 2023

Lynn gives the Physics Society colloquium ‘Spotlight on Biophotonics’.

October 2023

Tania Mendonca, Amada Wright and Lynn Paterson are putting together a Focus Issue of IoP Journal of Optics on ‘Optical Trapping Technologies for Biological Applications’. Check out the website for the Focus Issue here, and consider submitting a manuscript!

April 2023

Latest work from nusense has been published in Communications Biology: ‘Optorheo: Simultaneous in situ micro-mechanical sensing and imaging of live 3D biological systems‘.

April 2023

Lynn presents work at the Optical Manipulation and its Applications conference part of the Optica Biophotonics Congress: Optics in the Life Sciences. Login to Optica here to access the paper ‘Optical tweezers with integrated multiplane microscopy.

April 2023

The Optica Optical Trapping and Manipulation in Molecular and Cellular Biology Technical Group organised a special event at the Biophotonics Congress: Optics in the Life Sciences to celebrate 30 years of single molecule optical tweezers.

February 2023

Lynn gives the Heriot Watt Physics Society colloquium ‘Shedding new light on Biology’.

January 23

‘Roadmap for Optical Tweezers 2023’ is accepted for publication in the IoP J. Phys. Photonics. It’s open access. 40 articles by >50 authors; an amazing collaboration. Thanks to Prof Phil Jones for inviting me to join.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7647/acb57b

January 23

We are looking for a new PhD candidate (October 2023 start) to work on development of optical and microengineering technologies to better understand biophysical effects of laser light on cells. Details here. Deadline 28th February 2023.

October 22

Andrew’s new manuscript/preprint ‘An analytical framework for 3D microrheology measurements using an optical trap’ has been posted to Research Square. [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2163085/v1]

September 22

Welcome to undergraduate students Kris and Peter who will be conducting their honours projects in the lab, and welcome back to Grace for her Masters project.

September 22

Great visit to Amanda Wright and Tania Mendonca’s lab at University of Nottingham to see the OptoRheo instrument in situ!

August 22

Goodbye to summer interns Grace and Euan. They were working on both laser machining of microfluidic channels to help understand red blood cell flow in the human body, and bioAFM of cells to understand how different growth conditions affect the mechanical properties of the cells. Read about their experience in the December ’22 issue of the Heriot Watt University Physics department newsletter.

July 22

Lynn’s ‘Roadmap for Optical Tweezers: Biological Applications’ paper, with Prof Phil Jones, UCL, is posted on arxiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13789

May 22

Lynn is on the Programme Committee for SPIE Frontiers in Biophotonics and Imaging II to be held in Birmingham, UK, 6th-8th December, as part of SPIE PhotonEx. The final programme can be viewed here.

April 2022

We have posted our recent work from nusense on bioRXiv! ‘OptoRheo: Simultaneous in situ micro-mechanical sensing and 3D imaging of live cell cultures‘.

February 2022

Lynn is Topic co-chair for the Trapping and Manipulation session at Photon 2022 taking place in Nottingham, UK, 30th August-2nd September 2022.

January 22

Our review paper with Maiwenn Kersaudy-Kerhoas’ group is out in Analytical Chemistry! ‘Current and Emerging Microfluidic-Based Integrated Solutions for Free Hemoglobin and Hemolysis Detection and Measurement