• Portable Microscopy

For centuries, lenses are traditionally made with complex machinery because the need for fine grinding and re-flow moulding techniques to create smooth lens surface. In refractive lenses, the focal length is intricately linked to the curvature of the lenses. We harvest solid polymer lenses from hanging liquid droplets which are then incorporated into a wearable microscope platform that is use to look at macroscopic to microscopic objects in the field. We also make use of computational techniques to increase the performance of these lenses.

• Digital Holographic Microscopy

We develop an automated quantitative microscope platform based on holography that captures structural information of live biological cells without fluorescence labelling.

• Super-resolution Imaging 

We plan to develop high resolution imaging system based on surface waves (total internal reflection) for probing nanoscale biological dynamics.

• Intravital Microscopy

Whilst imaging cellular activities in thin samples are readily perform in laboratories, imaging cellular activities in an entire intact whole organ with light is a grand challenge in optical microscopy. The advent of laser scanning microscopy (confocal, multiphoton) coupled with specific fluorescent proteins are indispensable for visualising many cellular level activities that help to decipher the fundamentals of many biological processes. We have developed a flexible video-rate two photon microscopy system capable of imaging microvasculature flow in living mice.

• Collaborators

ANU