Miriam Menzel joined ImPhys as visiting researcher
Dr. Miriam Menzel is a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. She is working in the group of Dr. Jeroen Kalkman on optical coherence and optical diffraction tomography measurements of brain tissue.
She is part of the Fiber Architecture group who works on reconstructing the three-dimensional pathways of nerve fibers in the brain with polarized light microscopy. Her research aims at better understanding the physics behind light-matter interactions in brain tissue and developing general concepts of how the reconstruction of complex nerve fiber configurations can be improved. For this purpose, she combines biophysical modeling, analytical methods, high-performance computing (computational electrodynamics), and experimental studies. Currently, she has been working on combining polarization microscopy with new approaches like two-photon fluorescence microscopy, diattenuation imaging, and light scattering measurements.
In January 2020, she has been working with Dr. Silvania Pereira (Optics Research Group, ImPhys, TU Delft) on scatterometry measurements of brain sections. From 10 to 28 February 2020, she is working in the group of Dr. Jeroen Kalkman on optical coherence and optical diffraction tomography measurements of brain tissue.
Miriam Menzel studied physics at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Imperial College London (UK) with specialization in theoretical solid state physics, medical imaging, and biophysics. In 2014, she started working as PhD student in the INM-1 at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany). A research stay led her to the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy in Florence (Italy). After receiving her PhD degree in physics from RWTH Aachen University in 2018, she started working as post-doctoral researcher at the INM-1. In November 2019, she was awarded the Doctoral Prize of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. In January 2020, she used part of the grant for a two-month research stay in the Department of Imaging Physics at Delft University of Technology (Netherlands).