All Things Cryo 2023

Emma Hesketh

University of Leicester

Emma manages the CryoEM facility at the University of Leicester (LISCB) which is part of the Midlands Regional CryoEM consortium including the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Nottingham. The Midlands Regional CryoEM Facility house a Titan Krios G3 equipped with a Gatan K3/BioQuantum and a dedicated freezing laboratory. As CryoEM Facility Manager Emma oversees day-to-day running of the CryoEM facility including training users, troubleshooting experiments and assisting external users. Emma is interested in troubleshooting grid preparation issues and analysing data.
 
The CryoEM facilities at Leicester are available for external users please go to www.leicester.ac.uk/cryoem to find out more. 

Jacqueline Hicks

University of Nottingham

Jacqueline is a Research Fellow within the Nanoscale and Macroscale Research Centre at the University of Nottingham. Previous to this, Jacqueline completed her PhD joint with Public Health England and undertook postdoctoral research joint with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developing nanobioelectronics; trying to capture events occurring at the nanoscale in real time. Jacqueline’s current research focuses on the development of workflows for correlative imaging across light microscopy, mass spectroscopy and electron microscopy; both at room temperature and under full cryogenic conditions. 

Nicole Hondow

University of Leeds

Nicole is an Associate Professor in the area of Materials Characterisation at the University of Leeds. Prior to this she completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Chemistry at The University of Western Australia, and undertook postdoctoral research University of Leeds in the electron microscopy of materials relevant to catalysis and toxicology. Nicole’s current research uses analytical electron microscopy in the examination and quantification of nanomaterials in complex matrices. She is particularly interested in applying cryogenic approaches to capture nano- and soft-materials in the native state, with analysis by analytical (S)TEM and FIB-SEM.

Gareth Jackson

Leica Microsystems

Gareth started his career in a clinical EM department in the early nineties. Since then he has worked for Olympus Microscopes and Leica Microsystems. Gareth is an active member of the EM committee and has been involved in many RMS courses over the years including the EM Summer School, Rothamsted Research Cryo Course and the Cell Imaging Techniques course at Oxford Brookes University.

Anna Kotowska

University of Nottingham

Anna completed her PhD in 2021 as a part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines. Between 2021 -2022 Anna undertook EPSRC Doctoral Prize in the Optics and Photonics group at the University of Nottingham. From July 2022 Anna has been a research fellow in the School of Pharmacy, specialising in surface chemical analysis in room temperature and in cryogenic conditions using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS).

Judith Mantell

University of Bristol

Judith Mantell is a Senior Electron Microscopist at the University of Bristol, sharing positions between the Wolfson Bioimaging Facility and the research group of Prof. Paul Verkade. The facility houses 2 TEMs, complete with cryo facilities as well as 3 SEMs , one a FEG SEM with cryo attachment. Although starting out as a Physics graduate and working in materials research, Judith has since worked for Oxford Instruments as Sales and Applications specialist in their EM division (now owned by Gatan), and previously for Philips Electron Optics (now FEI) as a TEM Application specialist both in Eindhoven and Cambridge. She has just been announced winner of this years' RMS Vice Presidents Medal.

Chris Parmenter

University of Nottingham

Christopher is a Research Officer in Cryogenic Electron Microscopy. His PhD is in polymer chemistry through which he developed skills in Cryo-TEM whilst investigating soft and biological systems. He recently moved into SEM, specifically Cryo-SEM and FIB-SEM of any samples where there is a nano-scale problem to solve or understand. He is keen to meet with other microscopists to further his knowledge of EM & other techniques.
Chris is currently the Editor of Microscopy & Analysis.

Michael Schwertner

Linkam Scientific Instruments

Michael has a background in physics and optics and a particular interest in microscopy, instrument design and image processing. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, Dept. of Engineering Science, where he worked on confocal microscopy, adaptive optics and wavefront sensing. 
At Linkam he has been involved with Cryo-correlative fluorescence / EM imaging (CLEM), cryo workflows and the design of some aspects of the related instruments - including the CryoGenium robotic plunger. He has contributed to cryo-related workshops and courses in the past - including EMBO and Rothamsted Research Cryo Course.
 

Mark Taylor

Quorum Technologies

Dr Mark Taylor is the Cryo-SEM Application Specialist at Quorum Technologies having been involved with electron microscopy since his MRes at the University of Birmingham, where his research involved the design and application of water-in-oil emulsions for use in cosmetology. Mark received his PhD from the University of Liverpool where his research focused on wetting and oxidation of transition metal and bimetallic surfaces. After his PhD Mark managed the nanoscience laboratory at Diamond Light Source before returning to the University of Birmingham to run the Science City Physical characteristics laboratory based in the Chemical Engineering department.

 

Paul Verkade

University of Bristol

Paul has been involved in electron microscopy since the start of his career and during that time he has developed a particular interest in the development and application of new imaging technologies, mainly in the field of Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM). He is very engaged in the imaging community such as BioimagingUK, being a founder of EM-UK with Pippa Hawes, and Work Group leader CLEM within the EU COST action COMULIS. He loves organising training events and as such has been involved in many (RMS and EMBO) courses.