Dr Periklis (Laki) Pantazis is a Reader in Advanced Optical Precision Imaging (equiv. Associate Professor) at the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London and the Director of the Imperial College London and LEICA Microsystems Imaging Hub, a strategic collaboration in the field of optical imaging and its uses in research and innovation between Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems.
Dr Pantazis studied Biochemistry at the Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover/Germany followed by a PhD in Biology and Bioengineering at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden/Germany.
He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology/Pasadena/CA/USA before joining as an Assistant Professor the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel/Switzerland.
In 2018/2019, Dr Pantazis was appointed a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder and established his Laboratory of Advanced Optical Precision Imaging at Imperial College London. The aim of his research activity is to develop advanced imaging technologies, imaging modality, and activity sensors to establish an effective acquisition and interpretation workflow i) for the mechanistic analysis of biological systems in animal models such as mouse and zebrafish and ii) for the use in novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. His team fosters interdisciplinary projects in the fields of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Engineering, Chemistry and Optics and has secured 14 active/11 pending patents.
Dr Pantazis’ seminar will discuss primed conversion and GenEPi: Chemical and mechanical interrogation of biological systems. In recent years, advances in imaging probes, microscopy techniques and bioinformatics image analysis have markedly expanded the imaging toolbox available to biologists. Apart from conventional phenotypic studies, development and disease is increasingly investigated in vivo with improved accuracy in time and space and more detailed quantitative analyses down to the single-cell level. To get more insight into the elaborate chemical and mechanical dynamics that underlie development, my laboratory addresses the growing imaging needs of the biological community by developing assays, imaging technologies, and reagents for carrying out imaging with i) high spatiotemporal resolution at the single-cell level and with ii) sensitivities down to individual proteins. Such newly introduced and future imaging tools can then be used as a means of performing qualitative and quantitative imaging to mechanistically dissect development, disease progression, and tissue regeneration in vivo.
Please join us in SAF 122 or via the Teams link provided.