I am an assistant professor at the Department of Bionanoscience, TU Delft and my lab is part of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft.

I studied Physics at Heidelberg University with a specialization in Biophysics. During an exchange year at Cornell University I fell in love with single-molecule imaging and decided to work on a DNA-biosensor to detect transcription factors for my diploma thesis. I pursued my interest in quantitative imaging during my doctoral studies at the BioQuant in Heidelberg, where I advanced a method for counting molecules based on photon statistics. I learned a lot about single-molecule spectroscopy, labeling and dye photophysics. During my time at EPFL at Lake Geneva, I delved into in super-resolution and 3D multi-plane imaging. As a Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow, I also discovered the advantages of quantitative phase imaging and collaborated with neurobiologists. I am interested in developing versatile microscopy systems, harnessing the latest developments in fluorescence labeling technology as well as advancing image processing for quantitative (super-resolution) light microscopy. 

In my spare time, I love to spend time outdoors with my family and I enjoy skiing and playing tennis. I am still discovering the Delft area.

I am Moritz Engelhardt, a PhD student at the TU Delft Faculty Graduate School of Applied Sciences and part of the Grußmayer lab at the Department of Bionanoscience. I obtained my B.Sc. in Medical Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) in 2018. After an exchange semester at Riga Technical University (Latvia) and an R&D internship at Adidas AG, I joined the M.Sc. Biomedical Technologies programme at Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen (Germany). The prevailing interdisciplinary and neuroscience oriented environment introduced me to diverse research topics, among others neural reinforcement learning (MPI for Biological Cybernetics), rehabilitation robotics (CIN) and cellular neuroscience (Hertie Insititute for Clinical Brain Research). Inspired by latter, I conducted my thesis about the reconstruction of neural networks via transsynaptic tracer injections at the caesar-Institute Bonn (Germany) in the In Silico Brain Science Lab of Marcel Oberländer in 2021. At TU Delft I will now investigate the protein aggregation processes prevalent in neurodegenerative disease, in particular Huntigton's disease. To achieve this, I will develop and deploy a multifaceted nanoscale imaging approach to uncover intracellular protein dynamics and structural changes during the oligomerization processes. 

My name is Ran Huo. Since January 2022, I have joined Grussmayer's lab as a PhD student. I obtained my bachelor's degree in Applied Physics, after which I specialized in Optics and Photonics during my Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Program Europhotonics.  

Imaging techniques have always interested me. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, I was inspired by the idea of using optical methods to solve biological problems. During my internship at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, I was able to use fluorescence light-sheet microscopy to visualize inter-cellular signaling pathways. After spending a semester at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain, I learned more about super-resolution imaging techniques including STORM and PALM based on single-molecule localization, which motivated me to carry out my thesis project in single-particle tracking at ICFO, Barcelona. For my PhD project at TU Delft, I will be focusing on developing new quantitative imaging methods and exploring self-blinking dyes as used in SOFI.  

I joined the Grußmayer lab as a PhD researcher at the Department of Bionanoscience in October 2022. I studied electronics and communications engineering at Istanbul Technical University and performed my master project in the ITU Electro-Optics laboratory (EDL). In EDL, I worked on a 2D miniaturized piezo-fiber scanner system which can accomplish multiple scanning patterns with a single geometry. After engaging with optics and learning more about imaging methods, I was curious about super resolution microscopy techniques and biological applications. In October 2020, I joined an interdisciplinary project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany to investigate the membrane protein dynamics. I used a localization microscopy technique (PALM) and focused on the effects of laser and needle induced damage on membrane proteins and the recovery process. In my PhD, I will investigate ways for smarter microscopy techniques for applications which require fast decision making during the experiment and for post-processing. I will use different AI methods to allow real-time optimization of the parameter settings and/or switching between imaging methodologies.

I joined the KG group at the Department of Bionanosciences as a postdoc in April 2023. I have a bachelor’s in biotechnology, and I finished my PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in the area of applied optics.
 
During my doctoral work, I worked developing imaging-based methods for various point-of-care biological applications. This was the time I entered and fell in love with the world of microscopy, especially fluorescence microscopy. Towards the end of my thesis work, I joined a startup in India where I had the chance to build different digital automated microscopy setups and that fascinated me all the more. The Grußmayer group has been working with some really fun super resolution techniques and ideas, and my work here will be to study the DNA repair process using single molecule localization microscopy in collaboration with Maarten Paul from Roland Kanaar Lab at Erasmus MC.
 
Additionally, I also have experience working with microRNAs, nanoparticles (synthesis and applications), mammalian and bacterial cells.