Welcome to Angel Bravo

From Augstthe team is joined by Angel Bravo. Angel has previously been a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley. He has extensive experience in up-converting nanoparticles. Welcome!

“A Beating Laser”

Our paper on lasers that beat to the rhythm of the heart has just appeared in Nature Photonics (DOI 10.1038/s41566-020-0631-z). In this paper we show how microscopic whispering gallery mode lasers embedded into individual heart cells can be used to report on the contractions of the heart muscle. 60 years after their invention, lasers are … Read more

Welcome to Changki Moon

From April the team is joined by Changki Moon. Changki has recently completed his PhD at Seoul National University. Once we regain access to our labs, he will be working on OLEDs for applications in biophotonics. Welcome!

The force of cancer? Collaboration with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York

Our recent study in collaboration with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York shows the first direct measurement of the forces that protrusions in cancer cells can apply when they invade. Many cancers form invadopodia, tiny protrusions about a thousandth of a millimetre in size, that promote invasion of healthy tissue by releasing … Read more

Welcome to Sabina Hillebrandt

From October the team is joint by Sabina Hillebrandt. Sabina has recently completed her PhD at University of Heidelberg. In our group she will be working on OLEDs for applications in biophotonics. Welcome!

Alexander Zagajewski is Global Winner of the Undergraduate Awards in Mathematics & Physics

Alexander Zagajewski has been selected as a Global Winner of this year’s Undergraduate Award in Mathematics&Physics. Alexander receives the award for his work as an MPhys project student, looking at “Modelling the Properties of Intracellular Microlasers”. More details here. Congratulations from the entire GatherLab on this great achievement.

Forces applied by cells from the kidney?

In collaboration with Paul Reynolds of the St Andrews School of Medicine, Nils Kronenberg has used our previously developed ERISM force mapping technique to study the mechanobiology of podocytes. The paper just came out in Science Advances (10.1126/sciadv.aap8030). Also see the university’s press release for more details.

Membrane lasers and Plato’s eye beams

Markus Karl just have his latest paper out in Nature Communications. He describes fabrication and testing of ultrathin membranes of conjugated polymers with embedded DFB gratings. These membranes form flexible low threshold lasers that can be transferred onto a variety of objects, including onto banknotes and contact lenses. With the latter, you can in principle … Read more

Welcome to Dinesh Kumar, Emily Archer and Soraya Caixero

At the start of the new year our team is joined by Dinesh Kumar, Emily Archer and Soraya Caixero. Dinesh has a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology and will be using and further developing our ERISM method to study cell mechanics. Emily will further strengthen the OLED team in the group. Soraya has previously … Read more