researcher to apply protein biochemical approaches to fluorescence imaging in living cells. Rickman is an expert on fluorescence microscopy acquisition and analysis of plasma membrane proteins. He is now establishing his own research group concentrating on the organisation of proteins at the single molecule level using super-resolution microscopy. As a core-funded lecturer in the Life-Physical Sciences Interface at Heriot-Watt University he has established key collaborations with physicists and mathematicians to provide inventive routes for data acquisition and analysis, key to the LSI Theme.

LSI Laboratory

LSI Theme Members

The wider LSI Theme draws members with broad interests from a diverse range of disciplines spanning the life- and physical-sciences.

Professor Alan Greenaway (Physics) Professor David Adams (Chemistry) Professor Gavin Gibson (Statistics) Dr Peter Morris (Life Sciences) Professor Vicki Stone (Life Sciences)

Current LSI lab researchers include Deirdre Kavanagh, Charlotte Hamilton, Ali Dun, Annya Smyth, Monica Aggarwal, Katia Hiersemenzel, Kirsty Martin and Kat Mcgowan.

Professor Rory Duncan works in the field of membrane trafficking and has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of regulated exocytosis. He specialises in the quantification of protein-protein interactions in living cells, applying physics approaches such as time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC). Duncan spent the last 15 years at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, first as a Catalyst BioMedica (the commercial arm of the Wellcome Trust) Principal Investigator, then latterly as a Wellcome Trust Fellow.

Images and data copyright LSI Laboratory

During this time he established and streamlined the biophysical techniques required to probe the interactions, conformations, dynamics and nano-scale positions of large cohorts of proteins and lipids in living cells. Duncan established the LSI Laboratory in Heriot-Watt University in November 2010, where a group of approximately 11 researchers continue the work already established in Edinburgh, in state-of-the-art surroundings within the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences of Heriot-Watt University.

Dr Colin Rickman has worked in the field of membrane trafficking and fusion for the last ten years. Over this period he has published a number of research papers in high ranking journals on the protein interactions underlying regulated membrane fusion in endocrine and neuronal regulated fusion. During his doctoral training and subsequent postdoctoral position (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge) he applied a broad range of protein biochemistry techniques to describe a cascade of protein-protein interactions regulating multiple steps of the fusion process. To expand on this in vitro based understanding of regulated membrane fusion, Rickman joined Duncan’s research group as a postdoctoral