Donna R Whelan

Donna completed her PhD entitled ‘New Infrared and Fluorescence Techniques for the Elucidation of Cellular Ultrastructure’ under the supervision of Dr Toby Bell, Prof Don McNaughton, Ass Prof Bayden Wood and Dr Ljiljana Puskar in 2014. Her PhD focussed on continuing to use FTIR spectroscopy to investigate the functional architecture of DNA while simultaneously developing new super-resolution microscopy techniques. She has also conducted extensive research into the optimisation of sample preparation and image processing by systematically investigating the effects of fixation parameters on super-resolution imaging of microtubules, mitochondria and actin in various cell lines, as well as developing methods for DNA imaging. Donna is currently working as a postdoc in the Rothenberg lab in New York University School of Medicine where she studies DNA repair systems and the roles they play in modern medicine, particularly cancer treatment.

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Heather Higginbotham

Heather completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Steven Langford and Dr. Toby Bell in 2015, focussing on synthesising substituted amino naphthalene diimides for use as organic dyes in spectroscopic and biological applications. She is currently working with Professor AP Monkman at Durham University researching the use of different materials in photonics.

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Nicholas Young

Born in Japan in 1991, Nick completed his Bachelors Degree in Science with First Class Honours at Monash University in 2012. Under the supervision of Professor Steven J. Langford, his honours project looked into the use of NDI based macrocycles as fluoride sensors via anion-pi interactions. He is continuing this research as the basis of his PhD project under the supervision of Dr Toby Bell and Prof Steve Langford looking into further derivation of the macrocyclic sensor and further analysis of the anion-pi interaction and subsequent movement.