I am currently recruiting for three postdoc positions to start by January 2025 - two in advanced in vivo FLIM microscopy for force measurement in the beating heart and one in realtime heartbeat-synchronized imaging technologies. Further details below. My biological collaborators in Edinburgh and Sheffield will also be recruiting postdocs imminently.

I also always welcome expressions of interest as a mentor for anyone applying for a research fellowship aligned with my own research interests.

Prospective PhD students

I normally advertise PhD projects on findaphd.com from around November each year, but if you are interested in a particular research area where I am not advertising a specific project, let’s talk about it. I may have one or more fully-funded projects available in any given year.

There are also various scholarship routes available for a suitably-qualified applicant. In all these cases, applications must be made via the university, with varying deadlines, so you should contact me well in advance to discuss this:

• Scottish-resident applicants with a strong first-class degree are eligible for Glasgow University scholarship funding. Contact me by early December; internal selection early January.
• Black UK-domiciled students can apply for the James McCune Smith PhD Scholarships; final application deadline 31st January. In addition to full funding these provide an enhanced experience through external mentors, placements, leadership training, community-building activities and networking opportunities. Contact me by early December (guidance available for putting together an application); application deadline end of January.
• Students from groups under-represented in Physics can apply for the IoP Bell Burnell scholarships; application deadline mid January.
• Students from groups under-represented in Physics can apply to the DiveIN centre for doctoral training, for an October 2025 start.
• Chinese applicants with a high-achieving undergraduate GPA are eligible for the China Scholarship Council scheme. Contact me by December; internal selection late January.
• Non-UK applicants with a high-achieving undergraduate GPA are eligible for the College Scholarship scheme. Contact me by December; internal selection late January.

I wrote some general guidance for prospective PhD applicants here.

To submit a formal PhD application to the university, use this link.

Prospective postdoctoral researchers

I have recently recruited three postdocs - two in advanced in vivo FLIM microscopy for force measurement in the beating heart and one in realtime heartbeat-synchronized imaging technologies. I am expecting to recruit a further postdoc in the general area of in vivo FLIM in the coming months. We use cutting-edge TCSPC SPAD array imaging technologies, advanced motion-correction algorithms, and FLIM-FRET tension sensors to directly image cell-level forces in dynamic environments, working in a close-knit team spanning physics, biology and biophysics.

I advertise funded postdoctoral vacancies on jobs.ac.uk as and when they become available.

If you want to develop your own research ideas and join my lab, please get in touch to discuss my supporting you with a fellowship application. We have previously hosted a number of research fellows, including a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow.

International applicants

Glasgow University will pay visa costs for international applicants. In many cases they will also contribute to your relocation expenses. There are a number of different visa routes open to you if you are appointed to a position. For highly-qualified applicants these include the Global Talent Visa which is particularly attractive as it is not time-limited to the project you are initially appointed on, and gives you future flexibility to work in the UK.

Research environment

The Imaging Concepts Group (ICG) consists of four academics and 15-20 postdocs, research fellows and PhD students all working on related aspects of optical imaging, with a strong focus on biomedical applications including cardiovascular and ocular biomedicine.

Much of my own team’s research involves close collaboration with biomedical research collaborators seeking to use our techniques to further their own research studies, and also with industrial partners (leading UK microscopy companies). In my group you will experience broad interdisciplinary training, building your expertise in optical microscopy, research software and instrumentation technology development, and also develop a working understanding of the biomedical research applications that are driving our work.

I seek to cultivate an open, supportive research culture where lab members feel inspired and challenged, but not pressured, to do their best science. Interdisciplinarity is fundamental to my research approach, and I ensure my team have ample opportunities to interact with researchers in other disciplines and gain the cross-disciplinary experiences they need to thrive in their own careers. This is made possible primarily through my close collaborations with other teams – including my long-standing collaborators at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at Edinburgh University.

Previously-graduated PhD students have continued to both research and industry careers, in the UK and abroad. Similarly, former PDRAs and research fellows have gone on to other research posts, a permanent academic position, R&D positions in industry, and a spinout company. Equality, diversity and inclusion, and also collegiality, are strong positives of the environment within the School of Physics, (external recognition of the School includes Athena SWAN Silver since 2013, and Juno Champion since 2011).

Coming to Scotland

Scotland is a friendly and welcoming country, with Glasgow being located on the beautiful west coast. Glasgow has a thriving cultural scene, is a great city to be based in for access to the outdoors, and has an affordable cost of living. Hiking, mountain biking, sea kayaking and mountaineering are just some of the activities that our group members enjoy. Scotland’s mountains are small by global standards, but are wild and remote, and liberal land access laws mean you can basically roam and explore anywhere you want!

Previously-advertised PhD projects

To give prospective PhD students an idea of what sort of projects I tend to supervise, here are two recent project adverts. In general my projects are suitable for a student with a strong first degree in the physical sciences, a good grounding in optical physics, and an aptitude for computer programming (our preferred language is Python). If you are a strong student who would be a competitive applicant for the scholarship schemes mentioned on this page, we can also discuss other possible research topics connected with my research interests - contact me by email to discuss.

Cell-level biophotonic measurement of forces in living, moving tissue

New advanced imaging technologies such as single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays allow detailed measurements of individual photons emitted by living tissue via fluorescence. This includes measurements of fluorescence lifetimes, a sensitive probe of the molecular environment and mechanical forces present in living cells. Researchers are starting to use these probes to understand for the first time how forces and related biophysical processes at a subcellular level influence organ development, normal function and disease pathology. It is particularly hard to make and interpret these measurements in the moving environment of a living organisms, since the measurements typically require long integration times of many seconds.

This project will research new biophotonic approaches for measuring forces via fluorescence lifetime probes in living, moving organisms. Until recently this has seemed impossible, but recent advances in optics (fast single-photon imaging cameras), biology (genetic modification approaches), chemistry (force-sensitive fluorescent probes) mean that this challenge is now within reach. The student will design and construct new optical and computational systems to tackle this challenge, collaborating with hardware manufacturers to get the most out of cutting-edge technologies, and collaborating closely with biological collaborators to apply our research to answer real-world biological questions.

More details here, or contact me for more info.

Computational image reconstruction for dynamic biological samples

New microscope designs developed by optical researchers are revolutionising biomedical research by providing rapid 3D+time imaging of live biological samples. The raw data acquired often requires further computational processing, such as deconvolution and multi-view fusion, to deliver the best images. This project will research new computational strategies for reconstructing high-quality images of moving samples, in circumstances where that motion would previously have irretrievably corrupted the data acquisition. Questions to be explored within this project include:

• Can we deduce and correct for motion even when we have no external information on what that motion was?
• Can we use computational approaches to fill in missing or locally-corrupted image content in space and time?
• Can “classical” physics-led algorithms perform just as well as machine-learning based approaches?
• Can our approaches deliver improved performance even on unmodified commercial microscope platforms?

More details here, or contact me for more info.

Strong applicants from anywhere worldwide interested in these projects or other topics within my research interests can potentially be nominated for competitive scholarship funding (contact me well in advance - deadline for completed formal application is 31st January at the latest) - see details near the top of this page