UCL PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY
Optical Tweezers Group
UCL logo


Navigation

UCL Optical Tweezers Group: People

Information

Phil Jones

Group leader and professor of physics.  Phil studied at Cambridge University (Peterhouse) for a BA in Natural Sciences, Imperial College for an MSc in Applied Optics, and Oxford University (Magdalen College) for a DPhil in Atomic & Laser Physics, before joining the AMOPP group at UCL.  From 2014-17 he was the joint head of the Biological Physics group.

phil

Please contact Phil Jones if you are interested in joining the group for a PhD, MSc or MSci/BSc projects.

ResearchGate

orcid

Sandrine Heijnen

Sandrine is a PhD student who has joined the MSC-ETN ActiveMatter from 2020 to work on a project co-supervised with Giorgio Volpe (UCL Chemistry).
sandrine
Cigdem Boz

Originally from Turkey, Cigdem studied at Gebze Technical University, and was awarded a Turkish Government Scholarship to study for a PhD.  She joined the group in 2022.
cigdem
Shiyi (Ed) Chen

Shiyi is a UCL Physics graduate who has joined the group for a PhD after completing his MSci project with us.  He is working on multi-particle assembly using thermophoresis and optical fields.
shiyi
Nina O'Toole

Nina obtained a BSc from Newcastle University, and an MRes from Imperial College before joining us in 2022 to work on a collaborative project withYuval Elani (Imperial Chemical Engineering)
nina
Bingxin Guo

Bingxin studied at University of Colorado Boulder for a BSc, and the Queen Mary, University of London for an MSc before joining joining the Optical Tweezers Group in 2022.
bingxin
Shunfei Kuo

Shunfei is a third year Natural Sciences student who has joined us to complete his NSCI)004 literature project
shane


Visitors

Onofrio Marago

Onofrio is director of the NanoSoft Lab at the IPCF-CNR, Messina, on the island of Sicily.  He has a long-standing collaboration with the group, previously funded by the Royal Society, and still makes frequent visits.

onofrio

Jixiong Pu

Prof Jixiong Pu is Professor of Physics and Dean of the College of Information Science and Engineering at Huaqiao University, China.  He was awarded a visiting scholarship to come to UCL from 25 July - 08 September 2013.  His research interests include the generation of partially coherent light beams and their focusing and propagation, vortex beams, tight focusing of stochastic electromagnetic beams, applications of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP), and optical manipulation.

jixiongpu
Alessadro Magazzu

Alessandro was a PhD student at the University of Messina and IPCF-CNR.  He is visited us for one month under the COST Action MP1205 on Optofluidics in Oct-Nov 2013.  After completing his PhD he was a postdoc with Giovanni Volpe at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and is now back at IPCF-CNR (Messina).

alessandro
Xiang Han

Xiang is a PhD student at the National University of Defense Technology, China.  He was a visiting PhD student in the group in 2014-15, funded by the China Scholarship Council to work on optical binding.
xiang
Zhirong Liu

Dr Zhirong Liu is Associate Profesor in the Department of Physics at East China Jiaotong University.  He visited us for 12 months from March 2015 - February 2016.
zhirong
Weronika Lamperska

Weronika is a Masters student at Wroclaw University of Technology, where she works in the Singular Optics Group with Prof Jan Masajada.  She visited us in the summer of 2016.
hayden
Piotr Wasylczyk

Dr Piotr Wasylczyk is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw.  He joined the group as a visiting researcher from September 2016 to September 2017.
piotr
Gamze Islamoglu

Gamze was a student at Bogazici University who joined us for the summer of 2017 on the Erasmus+ Mobility for Traineeship Programme.
gamze
Gizem Ozdil

Gizem was a student at Bogazici University who joined us for the summer of 2017 on the Erasmus+ Mobility for Traineeship Programme.
gizem
Hyunseok Oh

Hyunseok was a student at Seoul National University, who joined us for summer 2018 on the UCL-SNU Exchange Programme.  Hyunseok has since joined the Physics PhD programme at University of California Santa Barbara.
hyunseok
David Bronte Ciriza

David is a PhD student at IPCF-CNR Messina as part of the MSC-ETN ActiveMatter project, supervised by Onofrio Marago.  He is visiting us from January - March 2022.
david-bronte-ciriza


Former Members



Shane Wilson

Shane completed his final year project in the group in 2022-23, working on optical trapping force calculations using the ray optics method.
riccardo
Yuchen Jiang

Yuchen was a third year Natural Sciences student who competed his NSCI0004 literature project on optical tweezers for single molecule biophysics experiments in the group in 2022-23.
riccardo
Riccardo Tognato

Riccardo completed his PhD in the Optical Tweezers group in 2021 working on optical trapping simulations of soft matter.  He is now a postdoc at the AO Research Institute, Davos, Switzerland.
riccardo
Anna Jorgensen

Anna is a student in the EPSRC-SFI CDT in Transformative Pharmaceutical Technolgies.  She studied Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, then obtained an MSc in Pharmaceutics from UCL.  Shejoined the group for her CDT academic training project, jointly supervised by Dr Dario Carugo (UCL School of Pharmacy) in Oct - Dec 2021.
anna
Espen Bergqvist

Espen was a fourth year Physics undergraduate at UCL who joined the group in 2021-22 to work on simulation of active particles in complex optical potentials.
espen
Unik Limbu

Unik was a fourth year Natural Sciences undergraduate at UCL who has joined the group in 2021-22 to work on ray optics calculations for optical trapping
unik
Haozhe Shen

Haozhe was a fourth year Physics student at UCL who has joined the group to work on ray optics modelling of optical traps.
haozhe
Kumail Kermalli

Kumail joined the group in 2019 to work on optical deformation of oil in water microemulsions for his MSci project.  Kumail is now stuying for a PhD at the UCL Quantum Technologies DTC
kumail
Yuhan Wang

Yuhan joined the group in 2019 to work on optical speckle traps for his MSci project.  Yuhan went on to study for an MSc in Computational Finance at UCL.
yuhan
Yassine Benlamkadem

Yassine was a fourth year Physics undergraduate at UCL.  He joined the group for an MSci project in 2018-19 working on simulations of active Brownian motion microswimmers in optical potentials.
yassine
Nick Tidy

Nick studied Physics at Birmingham University, graduating in 2014.  For his PhD Nick worked on optical trapping of artificial vesicles, in collaboration with the the Biological Soft Matter Group of Dr Tsutomu Hamada at JAIST, and deformable microemulsion droplets.  He defended his thesis in 2019, and now works for the Patent Attorneys J A Kemp.
nick
Jade Li

Jade was a fourth year Physics undergraduate at UCL.  She joined the group for an MSci project in 2018-19 working on optical deformations of microemulsion droplets.  Jade is now studying for a PhD in Materials Science at Lancaster University.
jade
Dominik Kufel

Originally from Poland, Dominik was an undergraduate student studying Physics at UCL.  He joined the group with an EPSRC Vacation Bursary for the summer of 2018 to work on optical speckle traps.
dominik
Yi Nian (Sean) Lee

Sean was a Natural Sciences undergraduate student at UCL, who joined us for his MAPS3001 literature project in 2017-18.
sean
Ronit Sohanpal

Ronit was a Physics undergraduate student at UCL. He joined the group to work on an MSci project on optical fibre traps in 2017-18.
ronit
Harriet Robertson

Harriet was Natural Sciences undergraduate at UCL.  She joined the group to work on an MSci project on Microswimmers in 2017-18
harriet
Dr Tom Smart

Tom studied Physics at Leeds University and after graduating in 2012 worked for IoP publishing for a year.  He obtained his PhD in the Optical Tweezers Group in 2017, and stayed with us as a postdoc to work on optical traps for microbubbles.  From October 2018 he is a postdoc in Prof Andrew Stockman's group at UCL the Institute of Ophthalmology
tomsmart
Chris Richards

Chris studied Physics at UCL and worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for his MSci project on light-scattering calculations for optical trapping experiments in 2012-13.  He stayed with us for a PhD project investigating stochastic thermodynamics using optical traps, obtaining his PhD in 2017.  Chris is now a software engineer with Sopra Banking Software,
chrisr
Natalia Tokarova

Natalia was a 4th year Physics undergraduate at UCL.  She joined the group to work on an MSci project on Microswimmers in 2016-17
ines
Ines Hidalgo Manzanera

Ines was a third year Natural Sciences undergraduate at UCL who joined the group to work on a MAPS3001 project on Optical tweezers in cell biology.
ines
Chris Fury

Chris studied Physics at Exeter University, then obtained an MSc in Fusion Energy from York University. He joined the group to work on the UCL/NPL optical and acoustic microbubble trapping project.  Chris was awarded his PhD in October 2016 with a thesis titled Acousto-optical trapping and manipulation of microbubbles, and is is now a staff scientist in the Acoustics Group at NPL.
chris
Kiran Govind

Kiran was a Physics student at UCL who worked in the group for his MSci project on optical fibre traps in 2015-16.
xiang
Alice Shipley

Alice was a Natural Sciences student at UCL who write about applications of optical tweezers for her MAPS3001 Literature Project in 2015-16.
alice
Hayden Fu

Hayden was an undergraduate student at UCL studying Physics.  In 2015 he joined the group for a summer project to work on optical fibre traps.
hayden
Stefan Siwiak-Jaszek

Stefan was a Natural Sciences student at UCL who worked in the group for his MSci project on fluctuation correlations between optically trapped particles in 2014-15.  He is now studying for a PhD in the Physics Department at UCL with Dr Alexandra Olaya-Castro.
xiang
Adam Plowman

Adam worked in the group for his MSci project on Microswimmers in 2013-14.  He is now studying for a PhD in Nuclear Engineering at Manchester University.
adam
Marios Sergides

Originally from Cyprus, Marios studied physics at York University, Toronto, followed by an MSc in Optoelectronics at Heriot-Watt and St Andrews Universities.  He is working on optical trapping and binding of microparticles with nanofibres.  In 2013 Marios was awarded a JSPS Fellowship to work with Dr Sile Nic Chormaic at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST).  From there he joined  the Single Molecule Manipulation and Imaging group of Dr Marco Capitanio in LENS, Florence, and is now back at the University of Cyprus.

marios
Susan Skelton

Susan studied at St Andrews University gaining a First Class MPhys degree in physics while working in the group of Prof Kishan Dholakia.  She was awarded a Graduate School Research Scholarship to study for a PhD at UCL and is working on optical nanofibre trapping and binding of microparticles and optical tweezers.  In 2008 Susan won the NPL award for Best Physics Student (judged by the IoP) at the National SET awards for her work on white light diffraction and trapping at St Andrews.  Susan defended her PhD thesis on Applications of cylindrical vector beams to optical micromanipulation in February 2013, for which she was awarded the Carey Foster Prize for the best PhD thesis in AMOPP Physics at UCL, then was a postdoc in the group of Prof Satoshi Kawata in the Laboratory for Scientific Instrumentation and Engineering (LaSIE) at the University of Osaka, Japan until September 2014, then returned to Prof Dholakia's group in St Andrews as a postdoc.  Susan now works as a Research and Knowledge Exchange Associate at Strathclyde University.

Mark Ransley

Mark studied Maths (and Music!) at Surrey University, and is now a PhD student on the CoMPLEX DTC programme.  He is working on a project in super-resolution microscopy, co-supervised by Dr Geraint Thomas in 2012-13.
kelly
Zhi Hao Wong

Zhi worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for his MSci project in 2012-13 on Plasmonics: the optical properties of metallic nanoparticles.  He was awarded the MAPS Faculty Medal for the best performance in final year exams, and also the Physics Department William Bragg Prize for best overall undergraduate
kelly
Kelly Thorneycroft

Kelly was a Natural Sciences undergraduate at UCL who worked in the group for her final year (MSci) project in 2011-12.
kelly
Katherine Best

Katherine studied Mathematics at Durham University and worked as an accountant for KPMG before coming to UCL as a student in the CoMPLEX Doctoral Training Centre.  She is working on thickness measurements of biological fluid films using a number of different techniques in an ITPL project co-supervised by Guy Moss (Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology).
kelly
Tom Wyatt

Tom studied Physics at Oxford University and came to UCL as a student in the CoMPLEX Doctoral Training Centre.  He completed his CP1 project on biological applications of interferometry in Dec 2011-Jan 2012, co-supervised by Geraint Thomas (Department of Cell & Developmental Biology).
kelly
William Ashworth

William gained an MSci in Physics from UCL, and is now a student in the CoMPLEX Doctoral Training Centre.  He completed his CP1 project on structured light microscopy in Dec 2011-Jan 2012, co-supervised by Guy Moss (Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology).
kelly
Agata Pawlikowska

Originally from Poland, Agata studied at Wroclaw University of Technology and at Imperial College where she worked on holographic optical trapping and gained an MSc in Optics and Photonics.  In 2010-11 she worked on the UCL/NPL optical and acoustical microbubble trapping project. 
agata
Ewa Karczewska

Ewa is an undergraduate physics student at UCL.  She was awarded a Nuffield Foundation Undergraduate Research Bursary to work in the Optical Tweezers Group during the summer of 2011.  In the academic year 2011-12 Ewa studied for the third year of her degree at Toronto University, and started a PhD with Prof. Peter Haynes in the Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics Group at DAMTP, Cambridge University in 2013.  Ewa has kept a blog of one of her research trips to the Antarctic as part of Sun|trek.
ewa
Muhammad Abdul (Imran) Khudus

Imran gaind his first degree from Imperial College and worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for his MSc project in 2010-11.  Imran is now studying for a PhD at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, Southampton University, in the Optical Microfibre Devices and Sensors Group.
imran
Radhika Patel

Radhika was awarded a Nuffield Foundation Undergraduate Research Bursary to work in the Optical Tweezers Group during the summer of 2010, and then returned to the group for her final year MSci project, graduating in 2011.  She is now studying for a PhD with Prof. Neal Skipper in the UCL Condensed Matter Physics Group.
radhika
Andrew Edmonds

Andrew was a Natural Sciences student who wrote about optical tweezers for his third year literature project, 2009-10.  He since completed a PhD in the UCL HEP Group.
andrewedmonds
Soliman Edris

Soliman worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for his MSci project on Optical Solitons in 2009-10.  He was awarded the Burhop Proze for the best performance in Fourth year Physics in 2010, and is presently studying for a PhD in the UCL Laser Cooling Group of Prof. Ferruccio Renzoni.  You can find Soliman's own website here.
soliman
Caroline Harfield

Caroline worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for her MSci project in 2009-10 and went on to obtain a DPhil working on the UCL/Oxford/NPL microbubble trapping project, supervised by Eleanor Stride at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Oxford, in 2014.  Caroline is now a corporate sales engineer for COMSOL Inc.
caroline
Shazia Khan

Shazia worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for her MSci project on Optical Nanofibres in 2009-10.  She is a former President of Event Horizon, the UCL Physics & Astronomy Society.
shazia
Ben Boatman

Ben studied Mechanical Engineering at UCL before moving to the physics department where he worked on optical tweezing of ultrasound contrast agent microbubbles.
Norman Loeckel

Norman studied Economics & Physics at Rostock University, Germany, and came to UCL to study for an MSc in Physics in 2008-09.  He completed his MSc project on optical trapping with optical vortex beams in the Optical Tweezers Group, and is now studying for a PhD in Economics at LMU, Munich.

Duc Ninh

Duc worked in the Optical Tweezers Group for his MSci project in 2008-09 and graduated with a First Class degree.  He now works for Ernst & Young in Reading.


Nick Elias

Nick completed a BSc project on computer generated holography in 2008-09.  He graduated with a First Class degree and worked for Deloitte for a year before starting an MSc in Automotive Engineering at City University.  He now works for HSBC.  You can find Nick's own website here.

Shaady Hussein

Shaady completed a BSc project on computer generated holography in 2008-09, graduating with a First Class degree.  He now works for EFG-Hermes Asset Managemet in UAE.  You can find Shaady's own website here

Alex Dunning

Alex studied for an MSci in Physics at UCL, and was awarded a Nuffield Foundation Undergraduate Research Bursary to work in the Optical Tweezers Group during the summer of 2009.  He obtained his PhD with Tim Freegarde in the Quantum Control Group at Southampton University, and in 2014 joined Eric Hudson's Quantum Interactions group in UCLA as a postdoc.  Alex now work for base4 in Cambridge.

alex
Mikako Makita

Mikako graduated from Imperial College in 2007 and completed her MSc project in the Optical Tweezers Group in 2008. She is now studying for a PhD at Queen's University, Belfast.

mikako
Maqsood 'Max' Ahmed

Max graduated from Edinburgh University in 2007 with a degree in chemistry, and came to UCL to study for a PhD on the CoMPLEx interdisciplinary programme.  He worked in the Optical Tweezers group for his MRes summer project and has gone to the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Centre in the Division of Surgical and Interventional Science (UCL) for his PhD.

max
Muddassar Rashid

Muddassar was an undergraduate student at UCL.  He obtained a Nuffield Foundation research bursary to work in the Optical Tweezers group for the summer of 2008, and graduated with a BSc in Physics in 2009.  In 2011-12 Muddassar studied for an MSc in Photon Science at the University of Manchester Photon Science Institute.  He then obtained a PhD in the Quantum Nanophysics & Matter Wave Interferometry Group at Southampton University, with Prof. Hendrik Ulbricht, where he is now a postdoc.

muddassar
Alex Baker

Formerly at JP Morgan, and now working at Cheyne Capital, Alex studyied for a Physics BSc part-time at UCL, graduaing in 2009.  He did a summer project with the group modelling optical vortex beams in 2007, and went on to study for a PhD on electron-molecule collisions with Dr Jimena Gorfinkiel at the Open University.

alex b
Japheth Yates

Japheth worked on a 4C00 (MSci) Physics project on holographic optical tweezers in 2007 - 2008, and graduated with a First Class degree.  He obtained a PhD in 2013 working in the UCL Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, then worked as a postdoc at Imperial College.  Japheth is now an ESA Research Fellow based in Madrid.

jaf
Sarah Skoff

Sarah graduated from the Technical University of Graz, Austria, then came to UCL to study for an MSc (2006-07).  For her project she calibrated an optical tweezers and investigated their use for biological force measurements.  She passed her MSc with distinction and then completed a PhD at the Centre for Cold Matter in the Physics Department at Imperial College.  She is currently a research associate in the Applied Quantum Physics Group of Prof. Arno Rauschenbeutel at the Vienna University of Technology.

sarah
John Wright

John completed a 3C00 project on optical tweezing of microbubbles in 2006 (with Steffen Hilgemann). After leaving UCL he became a strategy consultant at L.E.K. and is now a strategy manager for Intercontinental Hotels Group.

john
Steffen Hilgemann

Steffen completed a 3C00 project on optical tweezing of microbubbles in 2006 (with John Wright), then obtained an MSc from the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College.  After graduating he worked for the hedge fund Synergy Global Capital, and now works in asset management at Catalina Holdings.

steffen
Seye Bolade

Seye did a 3C00 project on computer generated holography in 2005-06, and then was selected for the Mountbatten Internship Programme, New York City.  He now works as a Market & Credit Risk analyst for Deutsche Bank .

seye
Mathew Kallumadil

Mathew did a 3C00 project on optical tweezers in 2004-05.  He followed this with an MPhil in Micro- and Nanotechnology Enterprise at Cambridge University, and a PhD at the London Centre for Nanotechnology / Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory with Prof Quentin Pankhurst. After obtaining his PhD Mathew worked as a research fellow at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.  He is now a business consultant for IBM UK.

mathew
Ben Babington-Browne  poppy

Ben did his 3C00 project on optical tweezers in 2004-05, then went on to RMA Sandhurst for officer training and joined 22 Engineer Regiment.  Ben served in Iraq where he achieved the rank of Captain, and in Afghanistan until 2009Lasting tribute to Ben Babington-Browne.

ben

University College London - Department of Physics and Astronomy - Gower Street - London - WC1E 6BT - Telephone: +44 (0)20 7679 3422 - Copyright © 1999-2022 UCL


Search by Google