Giulia De Luca (SILS) wins Upcoming Scientist Award at Innovation for Health 2015

17 February 2015

Giulia De Luca, PhD candidate with the Molecular Cytology group at the Swammerdam Institute of Life Sciences (SILS), won the Upcoming Scientist Award at the Innovation for Health conference held in Amsterdam in February. At the conference she presented a poster on her research project at the Van Leeuwenhoek Centre of Advanced Microscopy (LCAM).

Spotlight on young scientists

To give young and upcoming scientists the opportunity to spread their research and results amongst key players and stakeholders in the life sciences and healthcare spectrum, poster sessions were organised at Innovation for Health. The Upcoming Scientist Award 2015 came with a €1000,- prize money and was presented to De Luca by Dr Paul Parren, Sr Vice President and Scientific Director of Genmab, which sponsored the award.

Re-scan Confocal Microscopy

De Luca carries out her research at LCAM, where she is supervised Dr Erik Manders, associate professor and operational manager of the centre. Researchers at LCAM they have invented a new super-resolution technique to obtain 40% better resolution than with conventional microscopes used in biomedical research. This new super-resolution technique, ‘Re-scan Confocal Microscopy’ (RCM), is based on standard microscopy extended with two optical scanners forming the heart of the microscope. The method is simple to use, robust and more photon sensitive compared to similar techniques. Ronald Breedijk MSc, technician with the Molecular Cytology group, helped to develop the instrument.