Super-resolution Workshop 2025

Kyle Douglass

EPFL, Switzerland

Kyle is a research engineer in optical sensing for soft matter characterization and cell biology with over fifteen years of optics laboratory experience. His strategy is to merge optical technologies and algorithms from statistics and image processing into complete sensing systems. To do this, he works directly with biologists and chemists to identify the shortcomings in their measurement tools and design the solutions that effectively meet their needs. Kyle benefits greatly from his multidisciplinary background, which has included topics such as fundamental optics, information theory and signal processing, software engineering, and materials science.

Rainer Kaufmann

Centre for Structural Systems Biology, Germany

Rainer Kaufmann gained his PhD in Physics from the University of Heidelberg developing single molecule based super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Afterwards he spent 6 years as a postdoc at the University of Oxford, with a focus on combining super-resolution fluorescence microscopy with electron microscopy. He is one of the pioneers in the field of cryo super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Since 2017, he is a PI at the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) in Hamburg and the Department of Physics at the University of Hamburg.

Uri Manor

University of California San Diego, USA

Dr. Uri Manor is the Faculty Director of the Goeddel Family Technology Sandbox and Assistant Professor of Cell & Developmental biology at the University of California, San Diego School of Biological Sciences. The Manor Lab develops new methods and tools for studying cellular dynamics with nanometer precision (a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick). This includes artificial-intelligence-based computational approaches (deep learning) that integrate data from microscopes to increase image resolution, sensitivity, and collection speed beyond what’s possible with any other existing method. The Manor Lab also develops new imaging, genetic, and molecular tools that facilitate the monitoring and manipulation of cellular structures implicated in diseases including neurodegenerative diseases and hearing loss. Using these advanced technologies, the Manor Lab connects structure to function. Their research advances scientists’ understanding of these cellular processes and ultimately helps discover and create new therapies for treating these conditions.

Ruby Peters

School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK

Ruby is an early career fellow in the physics of life. Her research group investigates how the structural, mechanical and material properties of actin cytoskeletal networks drive key cell functions. Since a tight regulation of cellular mechanics is critical to various physiological processes, and a deregulation of actin network architecture and dynamics is a hallmark of disease, there is an urgent need to uncover how actin networks control the mechanical properties of cells.

To address this, Ruby's group develops advanced fluorescence microscopy and computational approaches to quantify the nanoscale organisation and dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. In combination, they use state-of-the-art atomic force microscopy to map the biophysical properties of the cell surface. By integrating these techniques, they gain unprecedented insights into how actin networks mechanically function at both the nano and cellular scales, and how this in turn governs cellular behaviour.

Alongside her core research, she is passionate about improving equality, diversity and inclusion within STEM.

Silvio Rizzoli

University Medical School Göttingen, Germany

BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 2000, followed by a PhD at the University of Colorado, USA, working with Bill Betz on synaptic transmission. After a post-doctoral fellow stage in the laboratory of Reinhard Jahn, Max Planck Institute Göttingen, Germany, I became a group leader at the European Neuroscience Institute (Göttingen, Germany) in 2007, before being hired as a research professor (2012) and institute director (2014) at the Institute for Neuro- and Sensory Physiology of the University Medical School Göttingen, Germany. Major Research Interests: super-resolution microscopy, synaptic neuroscience.

Sabrina Simoncelli

London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, UK

Speaker information coming soon...

Christopher Tynan

Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK

Chris is a Senior Link Scientist at the OCTOPUS facility, an STFC run national imaging facility that is part of the Central Laser Facility (CLF). Since 2022, he has been in charge of the CLF’s new Abberior-Instruments MINFLUX system, the only commercial MINFLUX system currently in the UK.

Chris has 15 years of experience implementing and utilising a range of fluorescence imaging techniques and applying them to an equally eclectic set of research projects brought to the facility by users from the UK academic community. In his time at the OCTOPUS facility, he has worked on time resolved confocal-FLIM, FRET, multi-colour single molecule tracking, gSTED and localisation microscopy. His own research interests include the application of single molecule tracking and super-resolution imaging to study cellular processes in three-dimensions, particularly signal transduction by the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor.