We have several open spots for interested bachelor and master students – for more information, contact Gerhard Blab and make an appointment to visit our lab in the Ornstein Building!

• Fluorescence Anisotropy Microscopy
  In this project, you measure the polarization anisotropy in the fluorescence signal from a (biological) sample on a wide field microscope, using two cameras. The Anistropy contains information about the mobility and thus the mechanical environment of the fluorophores, as well as their oligomerisation state. We are looking for a student to solve the problem of how to best overlay (‘register’) the two images from the two cameras to extract the anisotropy information.
• Shaping Light with an SLM
  Spatial Light Modulators allow us to control the phase profile of a light bundle, and thus shape the intensity distribution in the focus of our microscopy; this is also known as “PSF engineering”. We use SLM to generate donut-shaped foci used in super-resolution microscopy (STED, a project of PhD student Imaad Mohammed) and are interested in optimizing this shape by correcting system aberrations, as well as the role of polarization (both in exciting the fluorophore, as well as in the emitted light) in this process.
• Simulation of Energy Transfer in Nano-material Aggregates
  When fluorophores come close (on the scale of nano-metres)  together, or find themselves near a metal surface, interesting photo-physics takes place.  I am looking for a brave student to bridge the divide between theory and simulation of such energy transfer processes on a molecular scale, and the experimental result obtained from labelled nano-particles synthesised in our lab by PhD student Jantina Fokkema.