Organizing Committee

Claire Brown, PhD

Director, Goodman Cancer Centre Imaging Facility, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Dr. Brown has been working in light microscopy for over 17 years. Her background is in Biophysics where she has been seminal in the development of novel fluorescence image correlation techniques to measure the sub-microscopic properties of fluorescent molecules from microscopy images. Developments include that of raster image correlation spectroscopy (RICS) where one can measure protein dynamics, concentrations and protein-protein interactions in living cells from laser scanning confocal images on commercial microscopes. Dr. Brown has been the director of the state-of-the-art Life Sciences Complex Imaging Facility at McGill University for almost 5 years. She oversees thirteen microscopy platforms ranging from sensitive wide-field microscopes to an automated high content screening (HCS) system for imaging cells in 96- or 384-well plates. Dr. Brown also has expertise in live-cell imaging, total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, laser micro-dissection, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence lifetime microscopy (FLIM) , quantitative dynamic imaging, image deconvolution, and advanced image processing and analysis. Dr. Brown has written numerous research articles developing and applying the various modalities of correlation microscopy, as well as, educational articles on the fundamentals of quantitative confocal and fluorescence microscopy, and live cell imaging.

Paul Maddox, PhD

Principal Investigator, Laboratory of Mitotic Mechanisms and Chromosome Dynamics, Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer
Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal

In the Maddox lab, we study three discrete mechanisms of the mitotic chromosome. 1) How are chromosomes formed in mitosis? 2) What are the underlying mechanisms which govern specification of centromeres? 3) How do kinetochores produce forces to move the chromosomes? Our work focuses on the use of the light microscope to determine the fundamental properties underlying each of these mechanisms. Specifically, we image events in living cells where individual proteins can be specifically removed thus illuminating the molecular basis of cellular events. We use the small soil nematode C. elegans as well as cultured human cells are models for these fundamental, conserved events. Importantly, cancer is a disease of misregulated cell division, therefore understanding basic mechanisms of cell division will provide critical information and potential chemotherapeutic targets.

Pina Calarusso, PhD

Scientific Director, Live Cell Imaging Faciliity, Snyder Institute for Infecton, Immunity, and Inflammation
Research Associate Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Calgary

Dr. Colarusso oversees the operations of the Live Cell Imaging Facility at the University of Calgary. She advises and collaborates with research groups who use optical microscopy to explore fundamental questions in the area of infection and immunity. The research projects that depend on the Live Cell Imaging Facility include broad themes such as the mechanism of host-pathogen interactions, as for example, during infection with Borrelia burgdorferi (the causitive agent of Lyme Disease) or with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The Live Cell Imaging Facility also supports scientists who use imaging to investigate other areas of host defence, such as in the dysregulation of the immune response leading to conditions such as sepsis, multiple sclerosis, and asthma. Pina Colarusso has experience in techniques including spinning disk and laser scanning confocal microscopy, multiphoton microscopy, and deconvolution.  Her particular research interests are in applying optical microscopy to explore the role of junctional and cytoskeletal proteins in leukocyte migration during inflammation.