Our review article “Optical Tweezers Approaches for Probing Multiscale Protein Mechanics and Assembly,” written in collaboration with Prof. Nancy Forde from Simon Fraser University, has been added to the Frontier in Physics Research Topic collection “Optical Trapping and Nanosurgery.” The collection can be downloaded (PDF or EPUB) from the link above.

We are looking for experimentally interested Masters and/or Bachlor students want to do their thesis project on the topic of OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography, with PhD candidate Pegah Asgari). OCT is an microscopy techique that allows to visualize small, sub-nanometre changes in a sample by means of interference. The ulitmate goal is to visualize electrophysiologic Action Potentials in live cells noninvasively, using optical means alone.

The project will involve learning how to operate the OCT system, but depending on the qualifications and interests of the student, it can be tailored towards a more experimentally oriented work, or focus more on theoretical aspects such as data and noise analysis — the latter being of utmost importance for an optical technique with picometre sensitivity!

If you are intested and want to know more, please contact Gerhard Blab!

We are currently offering a masters research project for students of Experimental Physics, or for preference, Nanomaterials Science in our lab (Molecular Biophysics). The research concerns energy transfer and quenching effects observed in fiducial markers for CLEM* and fluorescent labels used in super-resolution microscopy. You will find the full project description and contact details after the break.

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It is October, so scarcely a month after we have welcomed this year’s student into our master’s programmes, and it is already time to welcome visitors interested in becoming next year’s students. I hope to see you this afternoon at the Open Day in the Koningsberger Building on the Uithof!

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This year’s Dutch Biophysics meeting in Veldhoven featured a talk by Job Fermie on 3D CLEM — a ‘best-of’ if you will of his thesis reasearch which he will defend in early summer 2019. Please excuse the bad image quality taken by a non-expert (Gerhard Blab) from the back of the room.

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