New Collaboration: Multimodal Ion Beam Imaging facility

We are excited to announce a new collaboration with The Surrey Ion Beam Centre on a new £3m project ‘Multimodal 3D elemental and molecular imaging at the sub-micron scalefunded by the EPSRC.  The project, led by Prof Melanie Bailey at the University of Surrey, will be achieved.by combining MeV ion beam analysis (X rays, gamma rays, backscattered particles) and water cluster Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) for the first time in a single instrument.

Happy 80th John!

We recently got together with some alumni and friends of the group to celebrate John Vickerman’s 80th Birthday with a meal and drinks in Manchester city centre.  It was great to catch up with everyone. Congratulations John!

 

Welcome Abdulrhman

The world urgently needs better battery technology to rapidly move towards a low‐carbon society. However, commercially‐available batteries currently do not store enough energy, have limited working lifetimes, and are too expensive to make large‐scale electrification viable. To design improved batteries, a better understand of chemical processes inside a battery during charging and discharging is needed. This requires measuring the flow of ions and electrons across multiple interfaces, buried within the battery. Abdulrhman’s PhD project will develop methodologies to study these interfaces using secondary ion mass spectrometry and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy.  The project is co-supervised by Dr Alex Walton.

BBSRC DTP PhD studentship

Applications are invited for a cross-faculty BBSRC DTP studentship entitled: Imaging inflammatory changes in tissues by mass spectrometry

This project will focus on the use of mass spectrometry imaging of biological tissues to explore and further develop their capabilities in the context of inflammation research. Inflammation is central to progression and outcome of a wide range of important conditions including stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease.

Details of the project, application process and eligibility requirements can be found here. Eligible applicants should contact the primary supervisor Adam.McMahon@manchester.ac.uk before making a formal application (deadline 22 Jan 2021)

Collaboration with the Rosalind Franklin Institute

We have started a collaboration with the Biological Mass Spectrometry theme of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, led by Profs. Josephine Bunch and Zoltan Takats.  This aims to develop new capabilities for mass specrometry imaging using SIMS and laser post-ionisation.  We welcome back Dr Sadia Sheraz to the group to lead the experiments at the Photon Science Institute.

The Rosalind Franklin Institute is a new national institute, funded by the UK government through UK Research and Innovation, dedicated to bringing about transformative changes in life science through interdisciplinary research and technology development.