Director of the School of the Biological Sciences Microscopy Bioscience Platform (Associate Research Professor (G10)/Research Professor (G11))
We are seeking a new Director for the Microscopy Bioscience Platform (https://www.bio.cam.ac.uk/microscopy-platform), based within the School of the Biological Sciences city centre campus. This strategically important position will manage, develop and inspire an established team that delivers cutting-edge approaches and supports more routine imaging techniques. Through wide-ranging collaborations with our world-leading scientists, who use microscopy in a huge range of modalities and subject areas, the chosen candidate will have unique opportunities to foster research that contributes to our reputation as a global centre of biological sciences research. In addition to the knowledge and skills to drive innovation and support our world-leading research the successful candidate will have proven leadership skills and demonstratable experience in people and facility management. Building on a foundation of innovative microscopy, the Microscopy Bioscience Platform was successfully launched in 2024 and has received substantial investment in staff and instrumentation from both internal and external funders (including successful bids to UKRI equipment calls). The role holder will capitalise on this existing commitment, ensuring that the Platform is at the forefront of microscopy and that it is accessed by a diverse portfolio of academic, industry and commercial users to secure financial sustainability. To achieve this, they will establish and maintain wide-ranging contacts across the user groups, to be familiar with their needs and future plans, as well as networking with the national and international microscopy community to keep at the forefront of the field and seize opportunities for partnerships. There would also be the opportunity to embed a research group funded from external grant applications for those who wished to further advance a relevant field. Appointment at the Associate Research Professor (G10) or Research Professor (G11) level will be dependent on experience. For Grade 11 evidence of strategic leadership, responsibility for major research programmes, management of major budgets and resources, leadership of external networks, and a broader impact through consultancy and commercial activities would be expected. The Microscopy Bioscience Platform The Microscopy Bioscience Platform is an initiative to provide a focus for microscopy support and development across seven Departments in the School of the Biological Sciences. The primary aim of the Platform is to foster innovation and collaboration, offering supported access to a wide array of advanced instruments and a focal point for technology development in the biological sciences, delivered via the Cambridge Advanced Imaging Centre (CAIC) and externally funded research grants. Across light, advanced and electron microscopy, the Platform has a substantial user group of over 180 research groups and commercial companies. The Platform operates across an extremely diverse range of science, encompassing a wide breadth of organisms and microscopy modalities. This diversity requires an agile response, based on the experience and skills of senior team members, and an excellent instrument portfolio that has been subject to significant investment from both internal and external sources of funding. This is in addition to CAIC's bespoke microscope construction that enables both development of new research approaches and technical translation to commercial applications. In fulfilling their role, the Director will be guided by an established strategic board, and their post will be managed by the Head of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. For more information about the role and list of essential skills and experience, please refer to the Further Particulars. Informal enquiries about the position can be made to Professor Sarah Bray sjb32@cam.ac.uk or Dr Ben Steventon bjs57@cam.ac.uk. Apply: Click the 'Apply' button below to register an account with our recruitment system (if you have not already) and apply online. Applications should consist of a letter of application, a research and operational vision for developing the Microscopy Bioscience Platform (2 pages maximum) and a curriculum vitae. The full contact details for three professional referees should be provided. Please note that we will assume that you are happy for us to approach your referees at any stage, unless you indicate otherwise in the space provided on the form. The closing date for applications is 11 October 2026. Interviews are expected to be held in November. Please quote reference PM51041 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy. The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society. The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.
Building on cortical models
Over the past decade our community has made substantial progress in the construction of anatomically detailed network models of the cortical tissue. Thanks to advances in computer hardware and simulation technology, researchers can now routinely work with these models at the natural density of neurons and synapses. Moreover, the availability of cloud services means that such investigations can be carried out without having to install either the model or the simulation software. A recent workshop analyzed the impact of a specific model of the cortical microcircuit, published ten years ago . The model has been reused in multiple contexts: for reproduction studies, validation of mean-field approaches, exploration of methods of model sharing, and as a building block for larger models. Although the model was less successful in inspiring further neuroscientific studies than the authors of the original work had hoped, it became a de facto benchmark for neuromorphic computing systems. It sparked a constructive race for ever shorter simulation times and lower energy consumption. The quantitative comparison of different platforms reveals qualitative differences between conventional and neuromorphic hardware and limits of speed-up. The structure of the model is based on light microscopy because these were the data available at the time. Guided by simulation results and physiological evidence, the original publication hypothesized a preference of excitatory neurons for inhibitory targets. Modern electron microscopy data of cortical volumes combined with AI based reconstruction techniques is capable of resolving individual synaptic connections. This advances the concept of digital twins of the cortical network to a new level of precision, and has already enabled us to confirm the assumption of target type specifity underlying earlier models. Maybe with the progress sketched here, our community is at a transition point where it becomes easier to cooperatively and incrementally work on models with a larger explanatory scope. Presented in the van Vreeswijk Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar series (formerly WWTNS) on 2025-12-10. Recording duration: 00:39:15.
Hard x-ray imaging of biological soft tissues
The aim of this half day virtual meeting is to consider what is currently achievable with existing techniques and to explore where advancements can be made in the short and medium term. Leading scientists in the field will highlight the questions currently being addressed using hard X-ray imaging techniques, volume electron microscopy and their combination with other imaging modalities, with a forward look to areas of opportunity becoming accessible as a result of the recent and upcoming synchrotron upgrades. We expect an exciting day filled with science focused talks and lively discussions on how the field will develop over the next few years.
Analyzing Retinal Disease Using Electron Microscopic Connectomics
John DowlingJohn E. Dowling received his AB and PhD from Harvard University. He taught in the Biology Department at Harvard from 1961 to 1964, first as an Instructor, then as assistant professor. In 1964 he moved to Johns Hopkins University, where he held an appointment as associate professor of Ophthalmology and Biophysics. He returned to Harvard as professor of Biology in 1971, was the Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences from 1971-2001, Harvard College professor from 1999-2004 and is presently the Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences. Dowling was chairman of the Biology Department at Harvard from 1975 to 1978 and served as associate dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1980 to 1984. He was Master of Leverett House at Harvard from 1981-1998 and currently serves as president of the Corporation of The Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Awards that Dowling received include the Friedenwald Medal from the Association of Research in Ophthalmology and Vision in 1970, the Annual Award of the New England Ophthalmological Society in 1979, the Retinal Research Foundation Award for Retinal Research in 1981, an Alcon Vision Research Recognition Award in 1986, a National Eye Institute's MERIT award in 1987, the Von Sallman Prize in 1992, The Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research in 2000 and the Llura Ligget Gund Award for Lifetime Achievement and Recognition of Contribution to the Foundation Fighting Blindness in 2001. He was granted an honorary MD degree by the University of Lund (Sweden) in 1982 and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dalhousie University (Canada) in 2012. Dowling's research interests have focused on the vertebrate retina as a model piece of the brain. He and his collaborators have long been interested in the functional organization of the retina, studying its synaptic organization, the electrical responses of the retinal neurons, and the mechanisms underlying neurotransmission and neuromodulation in the retina. Dowling became interested in zebrafish as a system in which one could explore the development and genetics of the vertebrate retina about 20 years ago. Part of his research team has focused on retinal development in zebrafish and the role of retinoic acid in early eye and photoreceptor development. A second group has developed behavioral tests to isolate mutations, both recessive and dominant, specific to the visual system.
New tools for monitoring & manipulating cellular function
Dr. Looger will discuss reagents for tracking Ca2+, membrane potential ("voltage"), glutamate, GABA, acetylcholine, serotonin, dopamine, etc. He will also cover optogenetics tools and methods for correlative light/electron microscopy. They make all tools freely available to everyone and work to get them in the hands of people that have limited resources.
A journey through connectomics: from manual tracing to the first fully automated basal ganglia connectomes
The "mind of the worm", the first electron microscopy-based connectome of C. elegans, was an early sign of where connectomics is headed, followed by a long time of little progress in a field held back by the immense manual effort required for data acquisition and analysis. This changed over the last few years with several technological breakthroughs, which allowed increases in data set sizes by several orders of magnitude. Brain tissue can now be imaged in 3D up to a millimeter in size at nanometer resolution, revealing tissue features from synapses to the mitochondria of all contained cells. These breakthroughs in acquisition technology were paralleled by a revolution in deep-learning segmentation techniques, that equally reduced manual analysis times by several orders of magnitude, to the point where fully automated reconstructions are becoming useful. Taken together, this gives neuroscientists now access to the first wiring diagrams of thousands of automatically reconstructed neurons connected by millions of synapses, just one line of program code away. In this talk, I will cover these developments by describing the past few years' technological breakthroughs and discuss remaining challenges. Finally, I will show the potential of automated connectomics for neuroscience by demonstrating how hypotheses in reinforcement learning can now be tackled through virtual experiments in synaptic wiring diagrams of the songbird basal ganglia.
Predicting the future from the past: Motion processing in the primate retina
The Manookin lab is investigating the structure and function of neural circuits within the retina and developing techniques for treating blindness. Many blinding diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa, cause death of the rods and cones, but spare other cell types within the retina. Thus, many techniques for restoring visual function following blindness are based on the premise that other cells within the retina remain viable and capable of performing their various roles in visual processing. There are more than 80 different neuronal types in the human retina and these form the components of the specialized circuits that transform the signals from photoreceptors into a neural code responsible for our perception of color, form, and motion, and thus visual experience. The Manookin laboratory is investigating the function and connectivity of neural circuits in the retina using a variety of techniques including electrophysiology, calcium imaging, and electron microscopy. This knowledge is being used to develop more effective techniques for restoring visual function following blindness.
“Biophysics of Structural Plasticity in Postsynaptic Spines”
The ability of the brain to encode and store information depends on the plastic nature of the individual synapses. The increase and decrease in synaptic strength, mediated through the structural plasticity of the spine, are important for learning, memory, and cognitive function. Dendritic spines are small structures that contain the synapse. They come in a variety of shapes (stubby, thin, or mushroom-shaped) and a wide range of sizes that protrude from the dendrite. These spines are the regions where the postsynaptic biochemical machinery responds to the neurotransmitters. Spines are dynamic structures, changing in size, shape, and number during development and aging. While spines and synapses have inspired neuromorphic engineering, the biophysical events underlying synaptic and structural plasticity of single spines remain poorly understood. Our current focus is on understanding the biophysical events underlying structural plasticity. I will discuss recent efforts from my group — first, a systems biology approach to construct a mathematical model of biochemical signaling and actin-mediated transient spine expansion in response to calcium influx caused by NMDA receptor activation and a series of spatial models to study the role of spine geometry and organelle location within the spine for calcium and cyclic AMP signaling. Second, I will discuss how mechanics of membrane-cytoskeleton interactions can give insight into spine shape region. And I will conclude with some new efforts in using reconstructions from electron microscopy to inform computational domains. I will conclude with how geometry and mechanics plays an important role in our understanding of fundamental biological phenomena and some general ideas on bio-inspired engineering.